


Learning Experiences

by bomberqueen17



Series: Meet Death Sitting [12]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Gender Issues, M/M, Nonbinary Character, Trans Character, Young Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, canon-typical child abuse, or however the old saying goes, you can't make a witcher without cracking some children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:55:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26121523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bomberqueen17/pseuds/bomberqueen17
Summary: Geralt comes home from the Path for the first time and sees Kaer Morhen through newly adult eyes.Featuring nine-year-old Lambert.Story features characters and worldbuilding fromAnoke'sLambert-centric seriesSome Fucking Bullshitand is written collaboratively and directly in parallel with the storyThe Path To The Trials, which deals with Lambert's arrival at Kaer Morhen.
Relationships: Eskel/Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Lambert
Series: Meet Death Sitting [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1639717
Comments: 108
Kudos: 371





	1. Homecoming

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Path to the Trials](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25895626) by [Anoke](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anoke/pseuds/Anoke). 



> ART: this is a mod someone posted that I have no context for, but (possibly sans scar) [this is what Geralt would look like at this age](https://bomberqueen17.tumblr.com/post/639022804980858880/sexualsportswear-we-have-witnessed-and-in-fact) (I am particularly enamored of the freckles), and Anoke commissioned [a drawing of Lambert](https://bomberqueen17.tumblr.com/post/639113401133563904/hehearse-commission-for-anoke-based-on-their) that shows what he'd look like at the end of the story. (So sad and baby!)

1183

It wasn’t Geralt’s first year on the Path, but it was his first time coming back to Kaer Morhen. That first year, he and Eskel and Gweld had traveled separately but had met back up several times, and when Eskel had missed the last rendezvous, Geralt had sent Gweld on ahead and had gone back and found Eskel, tracking him back to his last known whereabouts: he’d been injured and stranded and struggling to recover. So they’d spent that first winter together, holed up in an unused shepherd’s cottage in the mountains on the border of Aedirn as Eskel recuperated. It had been hard, but they’d survived all right.

Their second year, they’d both fared better, off separately in the world, and Geralt had broadened his experiences considerably, and found himself a good gig to sustain him over the winter-- an herbalist had engaged him to harvest her some herbs, and that had turned into protecting her from bandits, and incidentally keeping her bed warm for the winter while her usual protector, her husband, was away. It had been, well-- it had _mostly_ been pleasant, and Geralt had known all along that he was getting kicked out as soon as the weather broke, and it had still stung a little but he felt he’d mostly been improved by the experience.

Mostly.

Yes, he’d been well aware that part of his appeal was that the woman knew Witchers were sterile so she could have her way with him without worrying about anything besides gossip. He’d learned an awful lot about pleasuring a woman and maybe he’d learned a few things about how people treated each other and also maybe he’d figured out that the notion that Witchers didn’t feel emotions like regular people was possibly not exactly correct. He’d learned a bit about how to pretend he didn’t, anyway. He’d also learned a lot about betrayal and the way people in general thought of Witchers; he’d expected to get kicked out in the spring but he didn’t expect that the woman would overcome the obstacle of gossip by telling everyone that he’d forced her to let him stay in her house, so they’d driven him out with stones and he’d nearly been forced into fighting the returning husband, which would have been awful because he’d have had to kill the man. That had been upsetting in all sorts of ways he had not at all foreseen, but as he’d managed to escape without losing anything important or having to kill anyone, he supposed, somewhat bitterly, it had been a net positive. Overall, a learning experience.

He _had_ enjoyed meeting up with Eskel in the spring and passing on all sorts of salacious things he’d learned, certainly; that had mostly been the consolation prize.

This, his third year, had mostly gone well, but at the end he’d gotten knocked around pretty badly by a golem he really hadn’t been properly equipped to fight. He’d won, in the end, and had survived, but he’d gotten more bones broken than Swallow could heal quickly, and he rapidly realized he wasn’t up to taking any more contracts. Fortunately he’d managed to acquire a horse by then, and once he could get on her, he’d started making his way back to Kaer Morhen.

He’d made it, finally. Not exactly a triumphant return, but he was largely in one piece, looked approximately right, and had at least enough dignity to make a credible showing. Maybe he hadn’t bought all the supplies he meant to bring back, but at least he had some coin to contribute to the Keep’s coffers. He’d planned on coming back anyway this season, and maybe he was a little early (maybe? He wasn’t sure what the usual date to come back actually _was_ , now that he thought about it; he’d had to push through freezing rain, but it wasn’t like it was really snowing yet), but at least he wasn’t crawling back with his tail between his legs.

No, he was officially a full-fledged Witcher, with three seasons and two winters on the Path, with a modest collection of trophies and a few scars and both his swords, and he was greeted as such as he rode past the curtain wall.

“Geralt!” Holda cried, swinging down from the wall. “At last!”

“Did you think I was dead?” Geralt asked, grinning, but not dismounting. He didn’t want to get off the horse; he didn’t want to walk the rest of the way, and he didn’t want anyone to see how hard it still was for him to get back up onto the horse. It was his ribs-- the rest was mostly healed, but his ribs weren’t right yet, and the cold here-- he could barely move.

“Eskel was here last winter and said you weren’t,” Holda said, “so we knew you’d at least survived that long.”

“Who’s back yet?” Geralt asked.

“Ah,” Holda said, “a lot of the older ones, I saw-- you’re the fourth to arrive today, but I think most everyone’s here already. Should be a storm anytime now to close the pass.”

That was good-- Geralt had worried he’d be among the first back. He didn’t want to look like he was crawling home early. But he had been so homesick, and had spent so much of the last winter just yearning for the place-- yearning wasn’t a very Witcher-y thing to do and he was eager not to give into the seeming of it.

“I’ll let you get back to your watch,” Geralt said, and kept riding. Holda climbed back up the wall, and Geralt set his jaw and managed to, he thought, achieve a seemingly neutral expression as he gazed his fill at the walls of the keep, looming up out of the valley looking forbidding and familiar and homely.

He was fortunate; no one was in the stables, so he could ride his horse-- a mare he’d named Roach after the habit of eating fisherman’s catches that had prompted the residents of her village to suspect that she was cursed, so they’d sold her cheap even when Geralt had pointed out that in his expert opinion she was not, in fact, cursed-- straight into the building, and could dismount without any witnesses to the way it was still horribly uncomfortable for him to raise his arms over his head.

Ribs, he thought, as he hung onto the stirrup iron and patiently breathed through it until he could see again, were the fucking _worst_. Roach, not cursed, just an asshole, managed to get her teeth into his elbow, and he punched her in the neck and laughed. She danced aside, and he kept his feet well enough and led her into a stall. Being able to cross-tie her was a luxury; she couldn’t turn her head to bite him, then, and he could take as long as he needed to getting all her tack and gear off.

A few people he knew came through as he was grooming her, but nobody witnessed the way he almost passed out getting the saddle up onto the rack, so that was also fortunate. In the end he left her in the stall with a note tacked up warning that she was a biter, stacked most of his baggage next to the wall, and got his most personal set of saddlebags carefully up onto his shoulder so he could walk mostly-normally into the Keep itself.

Half a dozen people greeted him warmly, which was nice-- Damius, the quartermaster, smiled at him and clapped his shoulder; two slightly older Witchers who’d gone out on the Path when he was in training each expressed delight that he’d survived; the one-armed library assistant who’d taught Geralt most of the sums he knew gave him a friendly sort of shoulder-bump semi-embrace; a younger Witcher from only a couple of years ahead of Geralt’s cohort beamed at him in welcome. And Tulek, who spent most of his time in the nurseries and had done an awful lot of the hardest work of raising Geralt, dropped his crutch and raised both hands to clasp Geralt by the cheeks and then pull him into an embrace.

“Geralt,” he said, “you made it back.”

“I did,” Geralt said, and he wasn’t used to being so tall, wasn’t used to Tulek feeling so small in his arms. Tulek, who had always been so big. Tulek, who had always smelled of safety.

Now, to Geralt’s nose, he smelled of children, of the herbal ointment he used on the scarring and the alcohol of the tincture he took for the pain, of the lichen of the stones of Kaer Morhen, of the often-washed fabric of the nursery furnishings. It did still smell like safety and home.

Tulek pulled back, holding his shoulders, and peered into his face with his one working eye. The other eye still could tell light from dark, but he usually kept a patch over it, partly because it alarmed new children, and then everyone was used to it. He’d been horribly maimed on the Path, Geralt remembered, and had been back here ever since, and in the nursery for much of that time. It had all happened long before Geralt was born.

“Have you just arrived?” Tulek asked.

“I have,” Geralt said.

“This is your first time back,” Tulek said.

“It is,” Geralt confirmed.

“So you’ll be in need of a room,” Tulek said. “Best to go find Szymon. This time of day he’d be to his office, I imagine. Ah, it’s good to see you, I’m glad.”

With a last pat to his shoulder, Tulek let go of him and nimbly hopped to retrieve his crutch. Which was good; otherwise Geralt would have tried to get it for him and probably wouldn’t have been able to stand back up, with these saddlebags. He was glad he’d left most of his luggage.

He walked down toward the steward’s office, reaching deep to focus on not showing that he was in pain. He could stop and take his last Swallow, which he’d been hoarding to heal up the damage of getting himself home. He considered it. But no, he could go farther, knowing he could rest at the end. Really rest, in a room with a door he could lock, in a keep full of his own people. And with the trunk full of all his belongings from childhood, which he’d have to get out of storage at some point, but he knew he was not equal to the task now.

He was concentrating so hard he almost didn’t recognize the person coming the other way down the hallway. At the last moment he blinked and registered that it was Master Vesemir, who’d taught him swordsmanship after he’d gone through the Trials.

“Geralt,” Vesemir said, frowning; he’d clearly noticed him some time before and realized Geralt wasn’t registering him in return. “You’re back.”

Geralt smiled. “I’m back,” he said.

Unlike many of the instructors, Vesemir was hale and hearty, with no incapacitating old injuries or other problems that kept him from the Path. But he was ancient, Geralt knew, despite looking like a man still in his prime; his hair was fading to gray, and his features roughened with age, his body thickened and stocky like a human passing middle-age, but he was neither slowed nor weakened by it, and spent his days swinging a sword and making keenly sharp observations. He was not the oldest of the Witchers at Kaer Morhen, but he was among the doughtiest.

Vesemir put his hand on Geralt’s shoulder to contemplate him, still frowning slightly. “You’ve filled out, Little Wolf,” he said approvingly, but then added, “but you move like you’re injured.”

“Ribs,” Geralt said. “Couple of weeks back. Still healing them up.” He managed a smile. “Wasn’t bad timing, I realized I could come back here after all.”

“This is your first time back from the Path,” Vesemir said, nodding. He looked Geralt up and down again, pausing to look into his face. “Did you have good fortune, apart from the ribs?”

“Apart from the ribs,” Geralt agreed, grinning a little more sincerely. “I’ve learned a lot, these three years.”

“Eskel said he’d wintered with you, the one before last,” Vesemir said. “Did you see him this year?”

“Around midsummer, we met up,” Geralt said. “It was good, we could swap some components and things. He looked well, then, but I don’t think he’s back yet.”

“No,” Vesemir said, “nor Gweld. Who else was in your year?”

Geralt smiled thinly. “That was it,” he said. The others had died in the second round of Trials.

Vesemir looked thoughtfully down and away. “Yes,” he said, “that was it.” He sighed. “When did you get in?”

“Just did,” Geralt said.

“Ah, so you’re likely looking for a room assignment,” Vesemir said. Geralt nodded. “I just came from talking to Szymon, you won’t find him in his office. Head along toward the kitchen, he was on his way there.” He clapped Geralt gently on the arm. “Good to see you again, Little Wolf.” And then he laughed. “I can’t call you that any longer! You can look me in the eye. Just Wolf, then, I suppose.”

“I suppose,” Geralt said, smiling again to think of it; Vesemir also had always seemed a mountain to him, but they were within a finger’s width of the same height now.

“Well,” Vesemir said. “I’ll be glad to have a drink with you tonight.” He clapped his shoulder again, and moved on down the hallway.

Szymon was in the corridor near the kitchen, as Vesemir had said, and when he saw Geralt he raised his eyebrows. “You’re back,” he said. “You need a room.”

“I do,” Geralt said.

Szymon snapped his fingers. “Fourth floor, by the tower, same corridor as that kid from your cohort. What’s his name, with the dark hair. Eskel.”

“I’d like that,” Geralt said, and inwardly steeled himself for climbing four flights of stairs.

He made it, and the room was fine-- had a built-in shelf in the wall, and a trunk under the window, and a decent bedstead with curtains, and Szymon made sure he had sheets and towels and things out of the general stores. “Don’t forget to report to Damius if you brought anything,” Szymon said.

“I didn’t really,” Geralt admitted. “I, ah.”

“I can see you’re hurt, kid,” Szymon said. “Don’t feel bad about it. You made it back, that’s what’s important.”

“I do have coin,” Geralt said.

“Worry about it later,” Szymon said. “Get settled. I’ll get someone to bring you up your trunk. We’re glad you made it back.”

Geralt managed to put his saddlebags down without falling over, and then as soon as Szymon shut the door, he downed his last, jealously hoarded healing potion, and went and meditated next to the cold fireplace for an hour, trying to focus on his ribs and undo the damage he’d done getting himself here today.

* * *

It was strange beyond telling, to walk into the great hall that evening as an adult. He remembered not to turn toward the alcove where the boys in training sat, but couldn’t make himself walk directly over to the tables with the adults either. He managed to cover his brief hesitation by looking around the room to see if Eskel was here yet-- he could have arrived while Geralt was off bathing, as Geralt had spent quite a long time at it despite not intending to. (One thing he hadn’t really fully internalized before going out on the Path was how rare a treat a good bath would come to be. He’d gone months at a time with nothing better than two buckets and a rag, if even that, and it was proving a sore trial to him.)

Not seeing any sign of Eskel, he continued to the group gathered around one of the long tables. They were all older, ten or more years older, nobody he’d known as anything but an adult, but they were also all people he recognized. Kavan, Lukas, Jorik, Arcturus, and Moldnar, were their names, and he’d had conversations with each of them during prior winters, had listened to their stories, had known them all his life. The kids who’d been raised here tended to have deeper relationships with the older Witchers like this; he’d spent a lot of his early childhood sitting on various laps when he was still tiny, before he’d been in training. He knew Jorik had been one to give him rides on his shoulders, when Geralt was very small-- he remembered that Witcher’s long braided hair, especially, and had been fond of him his whole life.

But once the boys were in training, they didn’t have much contact with the grown Witchers who weren’t instructors, and he hadn’t really talked to any of them much as an adult, so he was slightly uncertain of his reception. It had been so strongly discouraged, for trainees to hang out too much with the older Witchers, that he was still half-expecting to be told with a fond laugh that he oughtta scram.

But, of course, he wasn’t. He came up to the table and Jorik was the first to remark him, frowning up at him with a strange expression that suddenly resolved into recognition as Arcturus, beside him, murmured Geralt’s name.

“I-- Geralt!” Jorik said in surprise. “Is it really?”

“It’s me,” Geralt said.

“When did you get so _enormous_ ,” Jorik said, looking astonished. He stood up slowly, and to Geralt’s surprise, the older Witcher was several inches shorter than he was.

“It was a couple years back,” Arcturus said. “Don’t get me wrong, it happened fast, but it was a bit ago, now.”

Jorik shook his head, and then clapped Geralt on the shoulder, smiling in fond wonderment. “You were so,” he said, and then stopped, shaking his head again. “Well-- come, sit,” and he held his hand out for the pitcher. Moldnar passed over a cup, which Jorik filled and handed to Geralt. “Tell us how the Path has been treating you.”

Geralt sat, and tentatively assayed a story about a contract for a chort that turned out to have been simply an actual goat, and it worked, he managed to tell it entertainingly enough that the older Witchers all laughed and toasted him with their cups. Kavan followed it up with a story about a time he’d been called for a wraith in a barn that turned out to be an owl, and Arcturus had a story about a disappearing phantom that was really an over-imaginative teenager sneaking out at night. Jorik put in then, rather thoughtfully, with a story that had just happened this season, where he’d been called in for a haunting that he had quite confidently been able to diagnose as just too little fresh air and a charcoal brazier giving the room’s occupant dangerous hallucinations.

It was a good story, but Moldnar said, “Jorik, for the youngling’s sake, you have to tell him about your Law of Surprise.”

Jorik sighed heavily. “Ah, Geralt,” he said. “I know you’ve been cautioned about the Law of Surprise. _I_ was cautioned about the Law of Surprise. But I rescued a man from nekkers, and he had nothing, and I thought, you know. I have never in my entire career invoked the Law of Surprise. What would be the harm of it now? Surely it was a good time to use it?”

Geralt looked at him, faintly alarmed. “What did you wind up with?”

Jorik shook his head slightly. “A nine-year-old boy,” he said.

Geralt had no idea if that was bad. But he considered it, for just a moment, and realized he had no idea what he himself would do if given a nine-year-old boy. “Oh no,” he said.

“Poor kid,” Jorik said. “What could I do? I had to take him, if I left him there the next thing that went wrong would get blamed on him, for messing with Destiny like that.”

“What did you do?” Geralt asked.

“I brought him back here,” Jorik said, with a sigh.

"Not before trying to foist him off on the Temple of Melitele first," Arcturus added, mouth curled up in a teasing smile.

Jorik elbowed him, and said somberly, refusing to rise to the bait, "He was... temperamentally unsuited to Temple life."

“Nine,” Geralt said, frowning a little. “Is that too old?”

“Depends on the kid,” Jorik said.

“I was almost ten when I came here,” Kavan said unexpectedly.

“I was eight or so,” Moldnar said.

Jorik smiled at Geralt. “You came here as a baby, didn’t you?”

“Three,” Geralt said. It felt like the right time to bring it up, now that they’d so clearly included him in their camaraderie: “You used to play with me, I remember that.”

“I did,” Jorik said. He looked almost wistful. “You looked very different then.”

“I remember sitting on your shoulders,” Geralt said.

Jorik laughed. “If you tried it now you’d squash me flat, you enormous thing.” He put his hand on Geralt’s shoulder, near his neck, and shook him gently. “Truly, the size of you-- I never expected you’d turn out so huge.”

“Gweld’s still bigger,” Geralt offered. He hadn’t seen him yet this winter.

Just then Holda came in and spotted him, clearly freed of his watch duty at the wall. “Geralt! Geralt! It’s his first time back!” He had several other younger Witchers with him, from their cohort and the ones just older.

They insisted on plying him with drink, and drew out as many stories of his adventures as he could think of pithy ways to tell them. The tale of Roach, not cursed, just an asshole, went over particularly well.

Geralt knew he couldn’t get drunk, not with the toxicity from the healing potion he’d taken earlier, and the one he’d have to beg from someone tomorrow morning, but it took heroic effort to resist. Everyone, even the older Witchers, made much of him, and he wound up tucking himself next to Vesemir in sheer self-defense, because the ancient Witcher’s gravitas seemed to shelter him a bit from the worst excesses of everyone’s high spirits.

Still, he was moderately tipsy when, later in the evening, more of the Keep’s senior staff showed up. Hieronymous, the mage, appeared suddenly at his elbow and said, “Ah, it’s my double mutant!”

Geralt managed not to startle. The mage probably hadn’t magically appeared, Geralt had just been distracted, because he’d seen Master Rennes, the head of the Wolf School, approaching the table.

“You survived after all,” Hieronymous said, peering at him from closer than Geralt strictly wanted. (He’d learned, already, to be even more cautious of mages; they respected Hieronymous, here, and learned to fear him during the Trials of the Grasses despite how kind he was most of the time, but out in the wide world, mages were something to be feared at all times.)

“I did, sir,” Geralt said. Master Rennes was standing across from him now, giving him a long, considering look.

Ancient as Vesemir was, Rennes had already been old when Vesemir was subjected to the Trials, and you could feel the weight of it in his gaze. He said nothing, and Hieronymous patted Geralt on the shoulder and stepped away slightly. “I’ll have to examine you some time this winter,” the mage said, not reassuringly. “I’m eager to know how a few of your mutations settled out, in the end. But, it can wait, we have some months now, do we not?”

Geralt nodded politely, trying not to let his unease show. He did not want to spend any time in Hieronymous’s lab if he could at all help it, but he didn’t see how he could avoid it. It was unseemly for him to be frightened, but he’d had the worst experiences of his life so far at the mage’s hands, and he wasn’t eager for more.

It wasn’t like they’d mutate him a _third_ time, Geralt thought-- they couldn’t, he was too old now, and undeniably post-pubescent. But it was a deep-seated old fear of his, and the subject of frequent nightmares.

“Geralt,” Rennes said, impassive and hard to read as ever.

“Master Rennes,” Geralt said, nodding slightly.

“I’m glad to see you’ve survived after all,” Rennes said.

How to answer that? Geralt assayed a wry half-smile and said, “Probably not as glad as I am, Master.”

It didn’t earn a smile, but Rennes half-blinked and raised his head a little, about half a nod, in acknowledgement, which was generally as close as he came to an outright laugh. “Understandable,” he said. He looked around the room, which had fallen into a bit of a hush as he stood there. It was late, and the children had gone, and most of the adults had gathered to drink and talk.

“And so here we all are,” Rennes said, not loudly, but everyone was listening now. “Back for another winter with our…” He paused and looked around, and Geralt followed the direction of his gaze and saw Ksenya and Zofia sitting together, and Rennes’s mouth curved slightly. “Compatriots,” he said, and Geralt had a faint thought that he’d been about to say something gender-specific. Women as Witchers was a point of contention among the Council, and it was under Rennes’s leadership that the excessive mortality of female candidates had led to girls no longer being offered the Trials. It had mostly passed before Geralt’s lifetime, but he was aware of the echoes of bitter contention. Most of the women left among their number were old now, but there were a few younger ones who’d managed to get in by various circumstances. Geralt himself was a bit conflicted on the matter; the women were perfectly capable Witchers, but their death rate during the Trials of the Grasses was more like nine in ten, or fourteen in fifteen, compared to the seven in ten that boys averaged, and Hieronymus insisted there was nothing he could do to alter that.

Rennes went on. “Soon the pass will be closed, there’s a storm coming within the next couple of days, Hieronymus tells me. We’ve much to do this winter and there’s little point to make a fuss, but it gladdens my heart to see all of you here.”

Geralt put his cup down for a moment, startled-- but Eskel wasn’t here yet, he’d said he was coming-- and Gweld-- he’d thought he was early-- but then he picked his cup up again when he realized that Rennes was certainly making a toast.

Rennes raised his own cup, and said, “To another winter, together again,” and everyone raised their cups and then drank, banging on the tables.

Geralt didn’t exactly get drunk, but at some point, Vesemir helped him to his feet and walked him back up the stairs, and despite not being drunk he was a little bit floaty, and leaned on his sword-master’s shoulder, barely managing not to comment on said shoulder being lower than he remembered.

“Careful with those ribs,” Vesemir said, and Geralt smiled at him.

“I lived,” he said.

Vesemir gave him a long, considering look, and his mouth curved into a smile-- fond, maybe proud. “You did,” he said, and patted Geralt gently on the cheek. “You did, Wolf.”


	2. Diagnosis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No particular warnings but see end notes for a discussion of terminology relating to a trans character, if that's something you might want to be prepared for.  
> Oh also a mention of food hoarding/disordered eating, but only a mention.  
> Oh yeah also a description of a panic attack, but not from the POV character, so it's someone seeing a panic attack, and it's dealt with sympathetically, and oh yeah there's an offhand discussion of child abuse in there but that's Lambert's canonical backstory...
> 
> And of course, if you want Lambert's POV on this, it's [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25895626/chapters/63987319) in Anoke's parallel work.

There was never a shortage of things to do in the winter. Geralt had always known that, from before he was a Bastion boy-- winter was the busy season, for the children: it was when the Keep was full and there was always something to do. All the wonderful outdoor activities were inaccessible, but it was more than made up for by all of the extra adults who were around to play with, or when you were older, to watch as they did things.

The adult Witchers home from the Path had different duties, though, and more choices in their assignments. Geralt needed only a glance at the roof repair work party to know he was completely disinterested in signing up for that one; he wasn’t fond of heights and was old enough now not to feel the need to prove himself. They were working like mad on it, trying to beat the storm Rennes and the mage had predicted-- only a couple of days at most remained before winter descended, and it was important to make the most of it. But it did seem that plenty of people were signed on to that project, so Geralt felt in good conscience he could perhaps give it a miss.

With neither Gweld or Eskel here, he couldn’t just sign up for whatever they were doing. But he could always change tasks later if they showed. And it wasn’t like the long evenings weren’t mostly free, with everyone gathered together or having private gatherings in their quarters.

He signed up to help shepherd the littles around, that first day; the instructors were always glad of help, and he liked kids. It wasn’t a strenuous job and he was tired; his last couple of weeks on the Path had been rough, coming out of an injury Swallow couldn’t quite heal, and he needed a chance to let his body catch up. He wound up spotting some of the youngest trainees at one of the leaps most of them couldn’t make, on the Gauntlet.

The Gauntlet had several crossroads in it, and there were alternate routes that one could take at different points in one’s training trajectory. There was a smallish loop that could be completed by the youngest children, before they had any particular training-- it could be challenging, but if you fell, there were no sharp drops, and you could scramble up again. There was a much larger loop that the youngest children could do but only with the assistance of carefully-placed spotters, and the more of it they could do without assistance, the sooner they’d be able to do the whole thing alone, and move on to their next training.

So he stood and deftly caught about a dozen small bodies two or three times each, lifting them the extra three feet or so they couldn’t manage so they could scramble the rest of the way on their own. He remembered this, remembered being five or six and someone grown doing this for him, right here. It was easy to keep a straight face, to very seriously encourage each small boy, to let each of them think they’d really let him fall to his death if he didn’t try his very hardest.

Pretty soon the training really would be potentially life-or-death, Geralt knew that, but he also knew it wasn’t yet. Not yet.

Next up were the older boys, the ones who’d been training a while but hadn’t gone for the Trial of the Grasses yet. They could do a larger loop on their own, but similarly there was an expanded one for them as well; they’d need less help but they still needed watching in a few places to make sure they didn’t die. Geralt remembered that age a little more clearly, and remembered the easily-wounded dignity of it, so he made his expression even more solemn, his advice even more gruff, his assistance even more matter-of-fact and less solicitous. Helping the littlest littles had fortified him down somewhere in his soul where he wasn’t aware there’d been a lack.

These slightly older boys had done the Gauntlet before, had trained on it in parts and the whole; most of the places the littles needed help, these boys could manage on their own. Most of the assistants moved along with the littles to help with the next task, and only Geralt and two other adults stayed behind to help now. They relocated Geralt to a bigger jump spot, where he’d have to give a more difficult assist, and he ran lightly along the lesser wall-drop section of the Gauntlet to get there, finding every stone of it was still familiar.

(There was another section on the full Gauntlet with a wall-drop where slipping would be fatal, and a cliff-drop section as well that had made Geralt dizzy to contemplate, his first time; he’d had to take it at a crawl that first time. By fourteen he’d been able to do it at a run. Now he could do it blindfolded.)

This cohort had largely the same makeup as Geralt’s had-- there were bigger and smaller boys at wildly different points in their development, and some of them were cheerful and some were surly and some were solemn and some thought this was fun.

One of them was a ray of human sunshine, and beamed at Geralt as he held his hand out for the assist. It was Haken, who’d come to the Keep as a toddler, and Geralt remembered him as a little. He smiled back, and slung him easily across the gap.

The next boy approached him more cautiously, as if suspicious. “Come on,” Geralt said, “you won’t make it if you don’t commit,” and held out his hand.

Geralt had never seen this boy before, but he wasn’t little. He was skinny and small, but he was older, seven or eight maybe, dark hair and skin of a warm light brown, and his frown was anything but warm. “Who are you?” the boy demanded, and stepped up to look critically at the gap Geralt was there to help him over, and then at Geralt, up and down, pausing at his medallion, with a skeptical look like he thought maybe Geralt had stolen it or found it somewhere.

“Geralt,” Geralt said. “We’re not here to chat, kid.” He shook his head. “If you’re not confident enough to do it, then don’t, but you’ve got to go or get out of the way.”

The boy narrowed his eyes, looking determined. “I’ll do it, but tell me what you’re going to do first.”

Well. If this was his first time-- if he’d only recently turned up, and he hadn’t seen it before-- well, fine, then. This was a healthy amount of caution, actually. “If you get a running jump and grab my hand, right here at the wrist-- I can sling you across the gap,” Geralt said. “I’ve done it four times just now, I know how hard to throw you. You’ve just got to be ready for it, and then let go when I do, and put your hands out and catch, and you’ll be there.”

The boy’s jaw worked for a moment, then he nodded sharply, and backed up. “Keep going,” Geralt said, waving him farther back. “All right, now!”

The boy came running at him, faster than he’d expected, and he put his hand out and grabbed the kid and flung him exactly as hard as he needed to, let go at the right moment and felt the kid’s hand release, and sure enough the kid hit the other side just fine and kept running without a backward glance.

He saw the same kid again that afternoon, after the midday meal. His cohort was working with Varin, and Geralt had managed to cadge himself a break, in the guise of helping the quartermaster do a minor reorganization project. He and half a dozen others had hauled a number of storage casks out of one of the cellars and were cleaning it out, and Geralt paused to sit on one of the barrels and eat the snack the quartermaster had dispensed-- the last of the contents of one of the barrels, which had contained bags of almonds. It was important to keep those rotated, they’d go off quickly if left too long in storage.

They had a good view of the training yard; it was a crisp sunny day, probably one of the last of them for the season, and the boys had been set to practice-sparring. A Witcher named Ksenya, a few years older than Geralt but young enough that he’d been in training with her back when she was a boy, was sitting on the barrel next to Geralt, and they passed an agreeable little while watching the boys and remembering their own training.

He’d always admired Ksenya for how tough she was, how strong despite her size-- he’d been undersized a long time, and had benefited enormously from her example at how to get through some of the Gauntlet’s obstacles while being of small stature. Now that he’d wound up a fairly large person it was always strange to adjust, and she laughed with him about that; she’d never hit a growth spurt, and had wound up needing her own personal second round of mutations-- not a repeat of the Trials of the Grasses like Geralt had gotten, but something else the mages were able to do to make her body match her self more closely, to make her look as female as she’d always, apparently, been. (He didn’t know how that worked; she’d said she was a boy, back when they both were, but then maybe there were things about that he didn’t know after all. Seemed best to take her word for it.)

So they had a fair bit in common, but not a lot to talk about really, so they sat and watched the boys’ training in companionable silence.

Kavan was assisting Varin today, and Geralt pondered whether he himself would want to volunteer for that duty or not. He’d disliked Varin as a child, and wondered whether an adult perspective would change that. He’d have to ask Kavan later, he supposed.

Geralt recognized his frowning Gauntlet skeptic, still frowning and serious with his practice sword. He had very good form but it was clearly not unconscious yet, the way it was with some of the boys-- he was new, he hadn’t been doing this long at all, but he was trying very hard, and focusing better than some of the others were. He kept correcting himself, and it was sort of cute to watch, really. He wasn’t anywhere near the most impressive of the boys of his cohort, but he was well on his way to becoming competent. He took harsh corrections from Varin with gritted teeth, but he took them.

Geralt finished eating and shoved the rest of the little bag of almonds into a pocket in his gambeson. (The Path had only intensified the habit of food-hoarding he’d picked up as an underfed kid during the time when his mutations hadn’t let him digest food fast enough for his metabolism; he’d learned then to just always carry food, whenever he could get his hands on it, and eat as much as possible whenever he physically could.)

He hopped down from the barrel and looked toward the quartermaster, who was still deep in conversation with the Keep’s steward. Sighing, he stretched his shoulders and then his spine, swinging his arms to loosen them.

“Looks like you’re still healing something up,” Ksenya observed, watching him from her barrel perch.

“Ah,” Geralt said dismissively, “broke some ribs a little while back.”

“Hm,” Ksenya said, eyeing him thoughtfully, and Geralt turned back to watch the boys’ sword practice so he didn’t have to say anything else.

His frowning Gauntlet skeptic kid was in the middle of having Kavan demonstrate something to him, and Geralt was struck immediately by something in the kid’s body language. He’d frozen, and his eyes had gone oddly glazed, and Geralt _knew_ that look, knew the way that felt--

Kavan paused the drill, as the kid had gone unresponsive, motionless, curled into a blank-eyed flinch that could not more clearly have been _not_ what Varin had been trying to teach them.

“What’s happened?” Ksenya asked.

“I know that look,” Geralt said, and it was clear Kavan didn’t, and Varin had just turned to notice him and looked disgusted.

Before he could think better of it, Geralt was jogging over to them. Varin had raised a hand, perhaps to clout the boy on the ear, and Geralt stepped in between him and the kid, too annoyed to reflect on his own temerity.

“Hey,” Geralt said. “Hey. Hold up.”

Varin stared at him, clearly shocked at his intervention, and Geralt had to swallow down instinctive childish fear of the man; it was a decade since he’d been under Varin’s tutelage. “What are you,” Varin began, incredulity beginning to fade into fury.

Geralt made himself turn his back on Varin and look at the kid, who was still glazed, sightless, breath stuttering too fast. It was _exactly_ the state Geralt had found himself in several times after the Trials, when his body had become a prison of sensory hell.

“Hey,” Geralt said to him, and crouched down, keeping his body between the kid and the others. “Hey. It’s all right.”

The kid registered that he was there and twitched, eyes skittering across him but unable to focus. He was breathing way too fast, and his skin had gone bloodless, and Geralt could _feel_ the cold sweat he must be in, could remember the feeling too vividly.

“Sit down,” Geralt said, gently. “Here. Sit right here. Sit with me. I’m going to put my hand on your back, right in the middle. Okay?”

The boy twitched, maybe a nod. Geralt put his hand between the boy’s shoulder blades, pressing gently-- something to feel, something uncomplicated. “Now you’re going to breathe with me. Slow down. Okay? In.” He counted, held it a moment. “Out.” He counted again. “In.” The kid struggled, and in a moment managed to make an attempt, as Geralt quietly and patiently kept counting with him, kept the pressure of his hand steady.

“What are you doing?” Kavan asked, and Geralt realized he’d sat down next to him.

“This used to happen to me,” Geralt said. Kavan wouldn’t know that, he was older, he’d never had any contact with Geralt during training. “Happened to Idrik too, he’s why I know what it looks like.” Kavan wouldn’t know Idrik, either.

“What is it?” Kavan asked.

Geralt shrugged. “I dunno,” he said. “I just used to get these fits where everything was too much and it all stopped working for a bit.” The boy was looking at him, now, his blank terror fading to a much more self-aware fear, and he’d started to shake under Geralt’s hand. “It’s all right,” he said to the boy. “Just breathe. You need to keep breathing. They teach you meditation yet?”

“A-- a little,” the boy managed, teeth not quite chattering.

“That’s where we’re headed,” Geralt said. “You focus on your breathing and find your center like that. It helps.”

“Are you nearly done?” Varin asked waspishly.

Geralt turned and looked up at him. Varin had terrified him so much, as a child, and now he could see-- he wasn’t so big. He wasn’t that big a person. He wasn’t that scary. He was just a man.

Geralt had faced a lot of things scarier than Varin, in the years since he’d been under that man’s power, and he just wasn’t that intimidating from this perspective.

“Nearly,” Geralt said, as if it had been a sincere question. He turned back to the boy, considering the kid’s frightened dark eyes. He was afraid enough of Varin that he was going to slide right back into panic, if Geralt let go of him.

The thing was, Geralt’s own fits had been because of the mutations. This kid wasn’t mutated. Idrik’s fits had been from something else, though, because Idrik had died in the second round of mutations and he’d been having the fits for years before that.

So that meant something else was causing this kid’s fit, something unrelated to the mutations’ sensory enhancements. And Geralt had to figure out what, if he was going to help this kid at all and not just get him singled out for additional punishments, for the sin of having annoyed Varin.

At the moment, his own body as a barricade against Varin’s peevishness was doing the trick, and the boy was breathing almost steadily.

Kavan was talking to Varin, and in a moment Varin moved off and Kavan crouched down next to Geralt. “I knew I hit him,” Kavan said quietly, “but I didn’t think I hit him that hard.”

Geralt glanced at Kavan a moment, considering, and then looked over again at the kid. Yeah, there was a red mark, he’d gotten it in the face, across one cheekbone. Wasn’t the first time the kid had gotten hit in the face either; his nose bore unmistakable signs of having been broken and healed. Geralt frowned. The boys in training before the Trials didn’t get hit in the face that much. Once they’d gone through the Trials they could heal faster and so they could train rougher, but the unmutated boys weren’t subjected to that kind of abuse even from one another as a matter of course.

And this kid hadn’t been here that long. Likely not long enough for a broken nose to heal, if he hadn’t ever been through the Gauntlet before.

Geralt was willing to bet this wasn’t the first time this kid had gotten hit in the face by an adult.

“I got a feeling maybe grown-ups shouldn’t hit this kid in the face,” Geralt said. “Like, just as a general practice. I bet if another kid did it he wouldn’t have a problem.”

“I’m not scared to get hit,” the boy said suddenly, his expression sliding from terror to angry determination.

“It’s not about _scared_ ,” Geralt said. “That fit you had, that’s what happens when your body’s telling you too many things at once. For me it was after I got mutated and I couldn’t handle all the sounds and smells and sensations all at once, and I’d just stop working until I got a chance to sort them out. But I bet someone taught you not to fight back when they hit you, and then Varin’s been teaching you that you have to fight back when you get hit, and it’s real hard for your brain to figure out how to do both of those things at once.”

The boy looked astonished, then furious, then mutinous, but he didn’t have anything to say to that, and Geralt figured it was true. Some adult had beaten him as a kid, and had surely beat him worse if he’d tried to resist. It wasn’t that hard to connect those dots.

“So I just have to figure it out,” the boy said, a little sullen but determined.

“Mm,” Geralt said. It wasn’t that simple, but it also sort of was. “Knowing what it was helped me. I grew out of it eventually.” Which was true; he didn’t shut down anymore. Sometimes he just had to power through it by turning off the parts of him that paid attention, but as long as he didn’t freeze up, that worked just fine.

“What about Idrik?” Kavan asked. “Did he grow out of it?”

“No,” Geralt said, “he didn’t get a chance, he died in the second Trials of the Grasses.”

“The _second_ ,” Kavan said, and then bit it off, and gave Geralt a long, considering look. “Ah.”

Geralt shrugged. To the boy he said, “Varin’s going to be mad at you because I intervened, so I’ll have to go talk to him and let him know it’s not your fault I stepped in. Don’t worry, there’s nothing he can do to me anymore.”

“I can help with that,” Kavan said quietly. “He and I are friends, of a sort.”

Geralt nodded. “Well, the thing is, while he’s still working on growing out of it, it’s for the best if he can avoid having it get set off again. I really think the problem is someone much larger doing the hitting, so if we can avoid that-- most of the training is them hitting each other anyway, and somebody his own size isn’t gonna set it off that badly.” If it did, this would have been happening a lot more already, and Varin would likely have intervened-- or kicked the kid out.

“And if it does, then we have some information that we need,” Kavan said, and Geralt knew then that there was surely a debate over letting this latecomer attempt the Trials. Well, being deemed unsuitable for mutations was a lot less of a death sentence than the Trials were, so that wouldn’t entirely be a bad thing.

“Fair point,” Geralt said, aware that the boy was standing right there listening. He looked at the boy, who was watching him steadily. He wasn’t trembling anymore. He probably wasn’t entirely all right, but at least he was functioning again.

The boy’s gaze went past him, and his expression shifted from wariness to a flatness it took a moment for Geralt to read as startled awe. Geralt had heard someone approaching, but something in the boy’s expression hinted that it was probably Ksenya.

“Who’s this, then?” she said.

Geralt didn’t know the boy’s name, so he looked at Kavan, who stood up. “Ah,” he said. “Ksenya, this is Lambert. Lambert, do you know Geralt?”

“Yeah,” Lambert said, looking briefly at Geralt, but then back at Ksenya.

“Lambert was Jorik’s Child Surprise,” Kavan said.

“Oh,” Geralt said, and looked at the kid again. Sure, he was a small nine, but he could be nine. “Oh, then you _are_ new here.”

“A couple of months,” Kavan said. “Three or four.”

“Why, he’s doing pretty well for only a couple of months of training,” Ksenya said. “You have good form, Lambert.”

Lambert was clearly struggling with something, and finally he blurted out, “Are you a Witcher?” to Ksenya.

“I am,” she said, and smiled at him. “I’m not the only one who’s a woman, either.” She looked at Geralt. “I came over to retrieve you, Damius is rather impatient to get started again.”

“Ah,” Geralt said, chagrined, and pushed to his feet. He looked at Kavan.

“I’ll talk to Varin,” Kavan said. He put his hand gently on Lambert’s shoulder. “I’m sorry for setting you off, kid. We’ll figure it out. It’ll be all right.”

Geralt wasn’t sure it would be, but maybe he’d done the right thing by intervening.

Maybe not. It was always hard to tell, with this sort of thing.

* * *

Geralt decided he’d be the one to bring it up. He saw Jorik sitting with Arcturus in the hall that evening, before the evening meal, and approached, and when Jorik looked up and acknowledged him, he went over and sat with them.

“I met your kid,” he said.

Arcturus grinned and elbowed Jorik, and Jorik’s expression went to resigned amusement. “My kid,” he said.

“Lambert,” Geralt said.

“Ah, Kavan mentioned something,” Jorik said.

“Was his nose broken when you… met him?” Geralt asked. _Got him_ sounded weird.

Jorik’s expression went grim. “It was mostly healed,” he said, “but he had two black eyes, a freshly knocked-out tooth, and some pretty bad bruising.”

Geralt grimaced; he’d noticed that missing tooth. Well, he’d been right. It didn’t feel good to be right about something like that.

“Fuck,” Arcturus said, as this seemed to be news to him as well.

“Yeah,” Jorik said. He shook his head slightly. “I didn’t give him good odds of surviving to adulthood.”

“When I was in training,” Geralt said, “one of the boys in my year, Idrik, he’d sometimes get these fits, where something would set him off and he’d go frozen and just-- panic to the point that he shut down and couldn’t react anymore.”

Jorik nodded thoughtfully. “I’ve-- seen that,” he said.

“It started to happen to me,” Geralt went on. It felt weird to admit it. He hadn’t talked about it, a lot. “After my-- after the first round of mutations. Everything would be too-- too bright, too loud-- I would freeze up because it was too many things and I didn’t know what to do.”

“So you saw it happen to Lambert,” Jorik said.

“Did Kavan say what my guess was, as to why?” Geralt asked.

Jorik nodded. “And you’re right. I-- his reactions with me made it pretty clear, he was used to getting hit a lot and had been taught not to fight back.”

“I think he can still train,” Geralt said. “I helped him on the Gauntlet too, I don’t think he’s short on guts. I think he’ll do all right. He just… needs a chance.” He shrugged. “Needs to get picked on by someone his own size, for a change.”

“He’s got no problem fighting other kids,” Jorik said, “which is incidentally part of the reason I didn’t leave him at the Temple. I _did_ try.”

Someone was approaching from behind Geralt, and he didn’t want to turn his back on Jorik impolitely. From Arcturus’s expression, whoever it was wasn’t out of place. Geralt tried to keep his focus on the conversation, so as not to be rude, but just then he caught a whiff of something familiar, a scent he couldn’t have named, and he had to turn then, and exclaim--

“Eskel!”

Eskel broke into a laugh. “Little Wolf,” he said, “I wondered if you were coming back this year.”

Geralt stood up, and held his arms out. Eskel embraced him warmly. It was still strange to be the same height, but Eskel’s broad shoulders still felt the same as they always had. Geralt hung onto him for maybe a moment longer than he’d meant to, and was delighted when Eskel swung a leg over and sat down on the bench next to him.

“Jorik,” he said, “Arcutrus.”

“Eskel,” Arcturus said warmly. “Good to see you again. How was the Path?”

“Same as ever,” Eskel said.

Geralt didn’t want to sit here and make polite conversation. He wanted to go back to their rooms and catch up and get reacquainted. He controlled himself, though; he knew if he got too excited about it the others would be able to tell.

He managed to keep himself calm enough through the rest of the evening, and dinner, and even a little bit of sitting around drinking and listening to everyone’s stories. But it wasn’t terribly late when Eskel finally gave him a look, and then made his excuses of being weary from the road.

Geralt considered playing it cool and hanging back a few more minutes, but decided against it. He wasn’t a kid, that he had to pretend not to want things. He was a grown person and could make his own choices. So he stood, and said, “Let me help you unpack, I wanna catch up.”

Eskel laughed. “Sure,” he said, and they said their goodnights, and left.

There were a lot of people about in the halls. Geralt kept himself under control, carrying a pair of Eskel’s saddlebags as Eskel carried even more luggage, until they were out of the main areas, and down in the wing with the sleeping quarters. He paused, set down the saddlebags, and Eskel turned in surprise.

“What, are you tired?” Eskel asked, and started to go on “Don’t think I didn’t notice you favoring--” and then Geralt interrupted by grabbing the front of his gambeson and yanking him into one of the alcoves along the passage, where the narrow windows were set back for light. It was dark now, and gave an illusion of privacy, though anyone could happen by.

“C’mere,” Geralt said, and pressed his mouth to Eskel’s. Eskel made a low, rumbling noise of pleasure, and let himself be manhandled back into the niche.

Even better, he kissed Geralt back, and they passed an agreeable little while like that. It felt good, it felt _so_ good; the taste of his mouth, the pressure of his tongue, the familiar contours of his teeth, the scent and weight of him. He’d put on a few pounds where Geralt had lost a few, and seemed in good health, like the Path had treated him well. A lot better than the year they hadn’t made it back, trapped by Eskel’s injury in a semi-abandoned cottage with inadequate forage and all kinds of wild improvisations for provisions.

He could feel Eskel gently probing along his sides, feeling the strapping where he still had his ribs bandaged, and he knew Eskel had noticed he’d lost weight. But nothing really needed to be said. He slid his hand down and grabbed Eskel’s ass, enjoying its familiar muscular heft.

Eskel pulled away from his mouth and moved his head to look backward out into the hallway. “Beat it, kid,” he growled.

Geralt had known someone was there, but he hadn’t cared. He glanced out into the hallway and spotted-- why, it was his glowering Gauntlet skeptic, Jorik’s kid, Lambert. He laughed, and tugged Eskel back in to kiss him some more.

After another moment, Eskel pulled away again, stepping back a little bit to look down the hallway. “I really mean it,” Eskel said, “you gotta scram, kid.”

Geralt sighed. “Go on, kid,” he said, but he was in too good a mood to be cross about a little being maybe too curious, so it came out sounding far warmer and more indulgent than the sternness he’d intended. He’d learned an awful lot about this sort of stuff by spying on grown-ups who, with the clarity of hindsight and having his own mutations, had absolutely known he was there but hadn’t cared to shoo him away, so he couldn’t really be mad at being spied on, himself.

There was a moment, and then little footsteps scuttled away down the hallway.

Eskel watched him go, then stepped back in, and grabbed Geralt by the front of his shirt. “C’mon,” he said, “there’s no need to do this in a hallway.”

After a thorough and spirited reunion, Geralt lay flat on his back in his own bed, looking at the ceiling of his own room, and Eskel sprawled out next to him, half on top of him, running a hand meditatively over his side.

“This was bad,” Eskel said, probing gently at Geralt’s healing ribs. Geralt couldn’t quite control the flinch.

“It’s not now though,” Geralt said.

“How long?” Eskel asked.

“Not long,” Geralt said, a little annoyed. “Leave me alone, it’s fine.”

“Hm,” Eskel said, and poked him again.

“Fuck off,” Geralt said.

“What did you take for it?” Eskel asked.

That was part of the difficulty. “Swallow,” Geralt said. It was the most basic of the healing potions, and he knew how to make more powerful ones, but he hadn’t had the ingredients in stock to do it. He’d been a terrible combination of cocky and unlucky, and he knew, he’d had it drilled into him, _that_ pairing was what killed Witchers.

“And?” Eskel asked.

Geralt shrugged. “One of those a day,” he said. At least he hadn’t run out of ingredients to make it, until a couple of days ago. He’d only run out of the last dose of the last batch he’d been able to make today.

“And that’s it,” Eskel said.

Geralt shrugged again. “It’s all I needed.”

“Hm,” Eskel said, but after that he gave up on it and fell asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a woman named Ksenya who is a Witcher; pursuant to Rennes's policy, mentioned in the last chapter, of not allowing female trainees, she identified herself as a boy for the duration of her training, and that was how she spoke of herself to fellow-trainee Geralt, because they were only allowing boys to undergo training at that time. After she survived the Trial of the Grasses, she came out as female and sought (and received) gender-affirming treatment from the mages, and will discuss more later about how she really was a girl the whole time, but this is from Geralt's POV so he identifies her as 'back when she was a boy' because that was how she had identified herself to him at the time.


	3. They Only Train Boys

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No particular warnings but there is some fairly heavy gender-discussion stuff including a trans person describing misgendering herself to get by, so there are more details of that in the end notes if it's something you'd rather be prepared for.

Geralt woke briefly as Eskel slipped out of the bed before dawn, but dozed off again when he recognized his surroundings. _His own room_. He hadn’t really thought about how good that would feel. Maybe he should have come back here earlier.

He woke later as the sky was lightening, and remembered that dawn was late this far north; he should get up. So he rolled out of bed and dressed himself-- clean clothes, an old spare shirt, a pair of trousers that were too short now but fit all right otherwise, and the shortfall was covered by his boots so he didn’t worry about it now. It felt good to be clean. He could probably get his traveling clothes back from the laundry today, they were surely done.

(And now he understood just how much of a luxury _that_ was, even at the cost of having to sometimes spend a day working there.)

Just inside the door of his room there was a little leather bag. He picked it up, and it clinked a little-- wrapped bottles, inside. Little bottles. Potions?

He looked inside. Four little bottles. No labels. He set the bag down on his side table and dug the waxed cork out of one of them, and sniffed it carefully. Ah-- it was one of the more powerful variants of Swallow; this one had… He sniffed carefully. Vitriol in it. Hard to get and expensive.

Eskel, had to be. Geralt sighed to himself, considered the twinge in his ribs, and downed the potion. He took fifteen minutes to meditate, enough time to let the toxicity fade a bit, and then went on down to find some breakfast.

He and Eskel signed up that day for firewood duty. There was always a need for the heavy, heavy work of splitting and stacking logs, and Geralt’s ribs were finally twinge-free enough thanks to Eskel’s intervention that he felt he’d be able to keep up. Eskel had clearly suggested it to bait him, but now he’d agreed and there was no backing out, they were going to annoy one another about it until Eskel was satisfied Geralt was actually up to it.

It wasn’t _that_ heavy a job, anyway.

All right, it was a little heavier than Geralt was truly up to doing. The ribs, perhaps, were finally healed, but all the muscles supporting them had atrophied somewhat over the course of the weeks Geralt had needed to favor them. His condition had deteriorated overall while he was trying to heal all those broken bones, and even with his healing largely completed, he didn’t have the muscle mass he was used to.

Fortunately, once Eskel had made his point he was willing to do the harder work of splitting and let Geralt do the stacking, and the others didn’t seem to comment on Geralt taking over perhaps more than his share of the even lighter duty of thwacking the log-ends to make sure they were aligned properly.

Still, it was a relief to make it to midday. “Tired?” Eskel asked, as they sat to eat.

Geralt was exhausted. He shouldn’t be, but he was. He shrugged. If this were a fight, he’d take a Tawny Owl potion to keep up, but that wasn’t exactly sensible in this context. He could beg off and go rest for a bit, but it would involve admitting he needed to do that.

Eskel was clearly trying to get him to admit he needed to do that.

“Where’s Gweld?” he asked, instead.

“Ah,” Eskel said, “I had word of him-- he missed the last rendezvous I’d set up with him but then so did you. At least _he’d_ left a note.”

“I didn’t get a chance to leave a note,” Geralt said, knowing he sounded peevish but there wasn’t much else he could say.

“He said he’d got a complicated contract that was going to take him a while to hunt down, and he was in the middle of it, so we weren’t to wait for him and he’d come if he could, but otherwise he’d make other arrangements,” Eskel said. “But he was fine.”

“Hm,” Geralt said, trying not to show his disappointment. He hadn’t seen his friend in a long time, and it would’ve been nice to catch up with all three of them together. But there was no sense worrying about someone not making it back for the winter when he’d literally never managed it before now. He was trying to think of something else to say when Ksenya sat suddenly next to him.

“Geralt,” she said, “Varin’s mad at us, for interfering with that boy.”

Geralt looked up, and over at the table Ksenya had come from. Kavan was sitting there, and had half-stood-- clearly, he was disagreeing with Ksenya’s decision to immediately involve Geralt in whatever they’d been discussing. Well, equally clearly, they’d been discussing Lambert.

Geralt looked at Ksenya. “Is the kid in trouble?” he asked.

“No,” Ksenya said, seeing his alarm. She put a hand on his shoulder. “No, Geralt, he’s-- you know what Varin’s like, but he’s not punishing the kid for what we did.”

“What _I_ did,” Geralt said. Ksenya wasn’t to blame for any of it.

“What did you do?” Eskel asked, leaning in with sudden interest.

Geralt hesitated. He didn’t want to blurt the kid’s business all over the place, but, well. Eskel had been there, both for Geralt and for Idrik. “You remember how I used to sometimes get those fits,” he said quietly.

It was, perhaps, unflattering how quickly Eskel caught on. “Oh, where you’d go-- yeah,” Eskel said. He frowned. “I thought you don’t get those anymore.”

“I don’t,” Geralt said, a little defensive. Maybe he did. Not where anybody could see. “But I saw-- one of the boys Varin was teaching, Kavan was helping out and hit him in the face in training, and he went-- I recognized the look.” He fidgeted, uncomfortable. “Like Idrik.”

“Oh yeah,” Eskel said. “Idrik.” They both were quiet for a moment; it always stung to think of any of those boys, the ones the Trials took, and more so for the ones who went in the second round having hung on that much longer with them.

“Yeah,” Geralt said. “So I-- got in the middle. I stopped Kavan and talked the kid down. Like you used to do for me.”

“Oh,” Eskel said, making a wry face. “But right in the middle of Varin’s lessons.”

“Yeah,” Geralt said. He was lucky, now that he thought back, that he hadn’t had that problem until he’d graduated beyond Varin’s jurisdiction. Vesemir had been much more understanding of that sort of thing, and in general.

“Yeah,” Ksenya said, grim.

Kavan had come over and was standing beside Ksenya now. “Varin’s not pleased,” he said. “But I wasn’t going to involve you, Geralt.” He gave Ksenya an annoyed look.

“No, it’s my fault,” Geralt said. “I’m the one that threw myself into it. It’s not the kid’s fault at all. But if Varin wants me to apologize, I will.”

There was no reason to be afraid of Varin. Geralt was an adult now, not a snot-nosed brat, and Varin had no further hold over him. And if he made sure Varin was annoyed with _him_ , and not with that poor kid who never did anything wrong except be the sort of unlucky where he’d been regularly beaten enough by the age of nine to have had his self-protection reflexes conditioned out of him, well--

“That might work,” Ksenya said, mouth twisting.

Kavan shook his head, but shrugged. “It might,” he said.

“And then,” Ksenya said, “I think you and I should go talk to that kid.”

“Make sure he knows he didn’t do anything wrong,” Geralt said.

“More than that,” Ksenya said, but she didn’t elaborate.

Well, it was as good an excuse as any to beg off splitting firewood for a little while at least. Not that Geralt was eager to tangle with Varin in his current state, or in any state really, but at least a hearty midday meal and plenty of water and small-beer to drink had taken some of the edge off, so he didn’t have to work so hard not to let on that he was exhausted.

He was still exhausted.

* * *

Varin was working in the forge, with no students, and Kavan led them there looking the whole time like he wanted to argue with them but wasn’t. Finally Geralt stopped him outside the door, and said, “Do you think we shouldn’t speak to him?”

Kavan sighed. “No,” he said, “I do.” He shook his head. “Just-- the thing about Varin is, he doesn’t really care about social things, so don’t expect him to have anything… kind, or polite, to say.”

“Understood,” Ksenya said.

Geralt nodded. He’d been thinking about what he was going to say, and that seemed to confirm that he ought to just stick to pragmatic things rather than trying to make sure Varin understood why he’d intervened. “Did you tell him what I figured out?”

“I did,” Kavan said. “That the kid’s been conditioned by some adult not to fight back when hit, and it’s colliding with his training here.”

“And he’d be fine as long as it’s someone his own size,” Geralt put in.

“I did specify that,” Kavan said.

“Good,” Geralt said. Then he could just repeat it and know it wasn’t new ideas.

“I’m mostly just here for solidarity,” Ksenya said, “unless you think there’s anything I need to tell him.”

“I think I’ll be fine,” Geralt said. Maybe Ksenya thought he was too young to hold his own, but he wasn’t going to admit that he’d figured that out.

They went in, and Varin was still in the setup portion of his work, laying out the tools and materials and consulting his diagrams. He looked up, glanced from Kavan to Geralt to Ksenya, then back to Kavan, and raised his eyebrows.

“I wanted to apologize,” Geralt said, presenting himself foursquare, weight on his toes and chin up. He was taller than Varin, which he hadn’t realized, and it almost threw him off to have to look down at the man. “For interrupting your lesson. But I felt I had to intervene when I recognized what was happening.”

Varin managed to look down his nose, even while looking up. “Kavan explained,” he said, “but, Geralt, while I remember Idrik having those fits, I don’t ever remember you having one.”

“They didn’t start for me until after the Trials,” Geralt said.

Varin narrowed his eyes, which when Geralt had been his student had always been a bad sign, but Geralt stood firm and managed to convince the panicky eight-year-old inside him that it was just the man thinking. “And how did you stop them, then?” Varin asked.

“I outgrew them,” Geralt said, and then thought, for the kid’s sake, he’d better be honest. “Mostly,” he added.

“Mostly,” Varin said, gaze sharpening on Geralt.

“Mostly,” Geralt said. “If it happens now, I know how to move through it.” He shrugged. “It’s not debilitating, and for the most part I know how to avoid it in the first place.” He tilted his head. “Likely, we now know what causes them for Lambert, so we can avoid that, and he’ll have time for the rest of his training to take over.”

“Hmm,” Varin said. “So you think he can still be trained.”

“I do,” Geralt said. Then he reconsidered; that might have been a trap. Varin liked to set traps. “Well, I mean, I don’t know how he is otherwise. But I know that one thing is no reason to prevent it. If he meets the criteria in all other ways, then this shouldn’t be an obstacle, is all I meant.”

“Hm,” Varin said, a little more sharply, and Geralt knew that he’d intended that trap, he’d intended to object to Geralt making a judgement for which he didn’t have complete information. “But if I can’t have an adult work with him,” Varin began.

Geralt shook his head. “No no,” he said, “he’s not afraid of adults, it’s not that, it’s just-- if you’re going to have adults attacking him, then you’re going to have to build in time to coax him out of freaking out afterward, and it just seems more efficient to me to gently discourage the adults involved in his training from hitting him, especially in the face, instead, and focus on other things.”

“Hm,” Varin said, and Geralt knew it was a reasonable thing to say. He’d been clouted a few times by adults in his own training, but rarely. Witcher training was hard enough that there was little cause to resort to beating children; ample other forms of punishment were always available, and those wouldn’t require a break from training afterward to recover. The most important component of Geralt’s training, he could tell now from the perspective of having experienced the Path, was the _relentlessness_ of it. There were rest days now and then but the “rest” days often involved an awful lot of brutally hard work.

There just plain wasn’t _time_ to cause the children injuries beyond the incidental ones they’d sustain in training. Even if the adults were monsters. Which they weren’t.

(The more Geralt knew about the world outside the Keep, the more he was privately of the opinion that most of the myths about Witchers were pure projection on the part of standard humans who didn’t want to admit that most of them did plenty of monstrous things themselves, on a regular basis.)

Varin sighed, and turned to include Kavan and Ksenya in the conversation. “The thing is, I’d come up with a training exercise to improve the, quite frankly, abysmal situational awareness of that entire older group. Some of those boys are considering themselves ready for the Trials, and yet simply wouldn’t notice an entire herd of chorts in the room with them if they were busy talking to a friend. So I had wanted to enlist the help of all of you winter-bored Path returnees, to whip these boys into shape. But if this one is going to die of fright like a rabbit every time an adult startles him--”

“If the exercise is for us to beat children,” Ksenya put in, “then I’d rather not participate, but if it doesn’t involve beating them then it’s not, as Geralt said, likely to set this boy off. So I don’t see a problem.”

“I don’t want anyone beating children,” Varin said impatiently.

“Then we’re fine,” Geralt said. “I don’t foresee a problem. And if it is-- well, then he’s got to learn how to deal with these attacks.” He shrugged. “I did. Maybe it will go better for him.”

 _Or, it will send him screaming insane, and he’ll be spared the Trials of the Grasses._ But that didn’t need to be said.

* * *

Geralt genuinely had intended to go back to splitting and stacking firewood with Eskel, but Ksenya towed him along with her to the kitchen instead. “The kids are on kitchen duty,” she said. “We should talk to him now.”

Every time Geralt had ever seen Petr in his life, the man had tried to sneak him food, and this was no exception. “You’re too thin,” Petr said, as he always had, after wrapping him up in the all-encompassing hug the blind cook had always used as a greeting (and to ascertain who needed feeding), and poked Geralt in the ribs, and Geralt managed not to flinch but only barely. “You were hurt,” Petr deduced, frowning.

“I’m fine,” Geralt said. “I don’t need--”

“Don’t turn him down,” Ksenya said, elbowing him.

“You, too, are too skinny,” Petr allowed, and gave them each a hunk of bread. Geralt had never turned down food in his life, even when he’d been physically incapable of consuming it, and he wasn’t about to turn this down.

Lambert, as it transpired, was not in the chattering group of boys peeling potatoes or scrubbing celeriac or peeling rutabagas or turnips. He had volunteered instead to haul ashes, a dirty and thankless job that gave a lot less of a chance of sneaking snacks, but also meant it would be easier to talk to him alone.

So they took their illicit bread and went around back and found Lambert just returning with the empty wheelbarrow to take another load of the kitchen ashes over to the dye and soap shed against the wall. He paused, regarding them warily, and scrubbed a filthy arm across his sweaty face.

“What do you want,” he said, clearly trying to hide curiosity under habitual sullenness as he looked back and forth.

Ksenya was gnawing on the crust of her bread, and the boy’s eyes kept going to her; Geralt suspected it wasn’t the bread drawing his attention. But Ksenya looked to Geralt, obviously expecting him to lead the discussion, which was fair; she was older and seemed to have more of a grasp of what was really going on, but this all was Geralt’s fault for interfering.

“We wanted to make sure you knew you’re not in trouble,” Geralt said. “We talked to Varin and I think he understood.”

“So he’s not gonna…” Lambert paused, clearly not knowing how to finish the sentence.

“He agreed with me that there’s not really a reason to set you off on purpose,” Geralt said. “It’s not helpful and isn’t going to help you get through it. And there’s not really much call, in training, to do the kind of stuff that would set you off. So it’s not like you’re never going to have to deal with that again, but he’s not gonna make you, on purpose.”

The boy’s eyes darted away, considering that, then went back to Geralt’s face, narrowed, and moved over to Ksenya, before looking away again. “Okay,” he said, and shrugged uncomfortably.

“Did you have any questions?” Ksenya asked gently.

“Oh, yeah,” Geralt said. “If you want any pointers on what to do if you do get set off, or anything?”

Lambert was a cute kid, was the thing, big dark eyes and a sharp nose and a pointy little chin; he was still too small to have entirely learned how to perfect his sullen mask, so an awful lot of what he was trying not to let on that he was feeling seemed to leak out. At the moment he seemed mostly wary, and Geralt knew he didn’t believe them, that he wouldn’t suffer any consequences for Geralt’s interference or more generally for having the problem he did. But he also kept glancing over at Ksenya, and if it wasn’t the bread she was eating, then Geralt wasn’t sure what it was. Presumably that she was a woman, which was increasingly unusual around here, but he wasn’t sure why the boy would care.

Lambert shrugged uncomfortably again, and Geralt could tell he wasn’t going to get the kid to ask any questions like this. So he dropped down into a comfortable crouch. “Take a break for a second,” he suggested. “Sit and talk to us. We’ll help you shovel the next load, it won’t slow you down.” And then he played his game-winner card, which was to fish Petr’s bread offering he’d squirreled away out of his chest pocket, and hold it out. “Wipe your hands first,” he said, as the boy reached for it.

Lambert wiped his hands off on the back of his trousers, and with a laugh Ksenya gave him a handkerchief to finish the job, and then Geralt handed over the hunk of bread and the boy plopped down on the paving and tore into it hungrily.

“You know all the other kids are sneaking carrots in there,” Ksenya said, settling comfortably next to Geralt. “It’s only fair you should get a snack too.” She glanced over at Geralt, who, because he knew it would amuse her, pulled out the bag of almonds he still had stowed from yesterday, and offered her some.

He gave a handful to Lambert, too, when the boy’s eyes went sharp at the sight, and they sat together eating for a moment.

“It’s all right if you don’t have any questions,” Ksenya said. “But I think I know some things you want to know about, don’t I.” It wasn’t a question.

Lambert looked up alertly, but Geralt couldn’t read just what the alertness was layered over. Geralt gave Ksenya a questioning look, because he had no idea, himself. She was smiling.

“So,” she said, “you know that they only train boys to be Witchers.”

Lambert nodded, frowning in some kind of concentration.

“It didn’t used to be like that,” Geralt put in.

“You don’t remember that,” Ksenya said, which was true, and Geralt inclined his head, conceding the point. “I don’t remember that. It was a long time ago, that they changed it.”

“It’s only because too many girls died in the Trials,” Geralt said, not sure where this was going.

“Too many _boys_ die in the Trials,” Ksenya pointed out, a little sharply, and Geralt inclined his head, conceding that one as well. “You know that better than anyone, don’t you?”

Geralt took in an uncomfortable breath, resettling himself. “Let’s not talk about my Trials,” he growled, but he had seen Lambert start to open his mouth, and now shut it, and he sighed, relenting; growling at the boy wasn’t accomplishing what they’d set out to do, here. “They put me through a second time,” he explained. “A few of us, who’d done well in the previous year, or two, they repeated the Trials a second time.”

Lambert’s big eyes went even huger, and Ksenya looked away, grim. “What happened?” Lambert breathed.

“Everyone died but me,” Geralt said, “and I spent the next two years struggling to stay alive.” He rubbed the back of his neck, and concluded, “But I survived, so, and here I am, so-- and it worked, I can--” He waved a hand. “See more stuff, do some things faster, take more potions. But.” He sighed. “Everyone else died.”

“You almost died?” Lambert asked.

“I couldn’t eat,” Geralt said, “hardly at all, and-- other stuff.” He made himself look at Lambert. “There’s a reason everyone keeps being amazed at how tall I am, because I was pretty much half this size up until the last year of my training, when suddenly my mutations settled enough and I started growing.”

Lambert nodded at that, frowning with great interest. A little uncertainly, he assayed, “They won’t make _me_ go through the Trials twice, though, will they?”

“No,” Geralt said, and he knew it was true. A lot of people had been against his group repeating them, and he doubted the massive death toll would lend much support to a repeat of the experiment, no matter how much of a success Hieronymous declared Geralt to be. “It’s not worth it.”

“Is it not?” Ksenya asked softly.

“ _I_ don’t think so,” Geralt said. “I’m-- it worked for me, sure, but it’s not worth the boys it killed, is it? I’m just a Witcher, it’s not like it gave me enough of an edge to be decisive.” He wanted to stop talking about this, so he gestured at Ksenya. “I want to hear more about where you were going with this. If they only train boys, then you had to be a boy during training.”

“Yes,” Ksenya said. She gave Lambert a conspiratorial wink. “I _wasn’t_ a boy, understand, but I had to pretend to be one.” For some reason, Lambert’s attention sharpened, at that. “I looked like one, I had mostly all the parts like one, I could act like one, I seemed to be one, but I knew I wasn’t one-- but I knew if I told them I wasn’t one, they wouldn’t keep training me. And I wanted them to train me. Because if I made it through the Trials, then I’d be able to be my real self, and I’d be able to do what I wanted.”

Geralt hadn’t really known any of that. He considered it a moment, and then considered why she’d be going out of her way to tell all of this to this child in particular, and then considered Lambert with more interest. What had she seen, in his rapt attention to her?

“This wasn’t the only way you could be--” Geralt said, a little fumblingly, “-- yourself, though, was it? I mean, there could’ve been other choices.” She gave him a keen look, and he collected himself and pushed on. “I mean the-- you don’t have to be mutated for mages to know how to-- make your body be-- what it’s supposed to.” He didn’t know how to say it.

“Ah,” Ksenya said, taking pity on him, “I see what you mean. No, you’re right, if I’d just wanted to be a woman, mages can do that without any other mutations-- it’s actually easier, if you’re just a standard human, for them to do that. But my point, Geralt, is that I wanted to be a _Witcher_. I always wanted that. I wanted to fight monsters and help people. If I went somewhere else and let them make me more obviously a girl, I wouldn’t be able to be a Witcher.”

“Oh,” Geralt said. He’d always wanted to be a Witcher, too, but he knew other people didn’t feel the same way. He knew specifically in this instance Jorik had tried to find somewhere else Lambert could go.

“You were always a boy,” Ksenya said to Geralt, but it was kind of a question. “And you’re a man now.”

Geralt made an uncomfortable face. This had come up somewhat-tipsily the other night, when he’d briefly been talking about-- well, that disastrous-at-the-end-of-it winter, which had been so pleasant at the time but ended so poorly. Someone had made some crack about the devious herbalist _just needing a man_ and Geralt had viscerally objected to it as a descriptor for himself, and had done so violently enough that it had wound up derailing the whole conversation. Mostly everyone had taken it to be funny, but Geralt had been dead serious.

Ksenya had been there for that, had been an instigator, and had certainly found it the funniest of all of them. “I’m not a man, I’m a Witcher,” he said. “It’s not the same thing. I _was_ a boy, sure, but I’m not a man.”

“What’s the difference?” she asked.

Geralt let his breath out without speaking, and contemplated it for a moment, then shot a sidelong look at the raptly-attentive boy. “I don’t know if I’m entirely comfortable discussing this,” he said.

“You can’t make babies,” Ksenya filled in.

“Well,” Geralt said, “I mean, no, I can’t, but there’s. Other stuff.” He sighed, frustrated. “I don’t know what to call it. But I’m not human, so I’m not a man.”

“Interesting distinction,” Ksenya said. She looked at Lambert. “For the record, he’s right, Witchers can’t make or carry babies, at all. They just-- none of that can make it through the mutations, it’s all wiped out. They’ll teach you more once you’re through the Trials.”

“ _If_ I make it,” Lambert put in, narrow-eyed.

“If,” she conceded. “So, Lambert, are you a boy?”

Lambert hesitated, darted a sidelong look at Geralt, and then looked back at her, eyes narrowed. “Yes,” he said, unconvincingly.

“Because they only train boys,” she said, smiling and pointing at him as if he’d said something very clever she was pleased by.

“Exactly,” he said, satisfied, in on the joke.

“After the Trials, though,” Geralt said, uncomfortable but game, “you can be what you want.”

“Not a man,” the kid said.

“No,” Geralt said.

“Not a woman though,” the kid said.

“Well,” Ksenya allowed, “no, by that logic.”

“I’m not-- even if they _did_ train girls I’m not a girl either, I don’t think,” the kid said, in a sudden rush. “I’m not-- I don’t know if I’m either.”

“Oh,” Geralt said, suddenly on firmer footing. “Like Nolla. They’re not a he _or_ a she, we just call ‘em they.” He looked at Ksenya. “Should’ve had _them_ come along for this conversation, they’d probably have figured out what was going on sooner.”

“They’re not back this winter,” Ksenya said, “but I _did_ think of that, love. You’re fine.”

The kid had blushed, his brown skin going darker. “I don’t-- I’m okay being a _he_ ,” he said. “I-- I have a-- a _friend_ who-- I have a friend who’s a _they_ but I’m okay as a _he_ , I don’t mind.”

Geralt and Ksenya both nodded seriously. “Well,” Geralt said, “if you change your mind about that, let us know.”

“And if anyone gives you any trouble about it,” Ksenya added on.

Surely, Geralt thought, no one would-- but he knew, Ksenya would know better than him if anyone gave trouble about that sort of thing, with all she’d gone through. Geralt hadn’t been much aware of it but he knew she’d had fights with some people, there had been Serious Discussions and such. A pang went through him, looking at this kid, thinking about all the things he’d already been through in his short life, and thinking how rocky and difficult the road ahead of him was in the best of circumstances-- he scowled, but there would be nothing he could do. “Kid,” he said, more gently, “if anyone gives you shit, it’s not like you can really come to me about it. Or us.”

Ksenya frowned at him, but then he could see her working through that, in her mind. “We’re not here most of the year,” she conceded.

“No,” Geralt said, “and it’s not our business. We’re grown,” and it still felt a little strange to say that, even after all this time, “and the Bastion boys aren’t our concern.” He sighed. “You haven’t been here long, you don’t know, but-- Petr, in the kitchen, he will always listen to you. You can go to him. And Tulek. You don’t know him, he works with the little kids, but-- he has the eyepatch and the crutch, and you-- you don’t even have to tell him everything, he’ll understand.”

“He will,” Ksenya confirmed. “He’s the only person I ever told I was really a girl. He helped me decide what to do.”

Geralt looked at Lambert, who was holding his face politely neutral, but those eyes of his, those big expressive eyes, were eloquently showing his skepticism. He was not going to go seek out a person he had never spoken to before, who was the nursemaid of a bunch of babies, to talk about his feelings. That was not going to happen.

And it struck Geralt suddenly, and he sucked in a breath and said, “Jorik,” on the exhale. “It’s not-- since he brought you in it’s not weird if he involves himself. You can go to him. You don’t even have to tell him anything. But-- I mean, at least while he’s here.”

“Jorik’s a good guy,” Ksenya said.

“He was always very kind to me,” Geralt said. “He-- thinks things through, a lot. And he knows-- he’s older, he knows more of how things work than me. Even if you don’t want to talk to him much he can tell you who can help you.”

“ _If_ you _need_ help,” Ksenya put in.

“Right,” Geralt said. “Of course.” But he was thinking about the kind of boy who volunteered to do the dirty, gross, thankless outdoor job while all the others were chattering away in the warm kitchen sneaking snacks and staying clean. “You’re not alone here, kid, that’s all. You’ll have to face the Trials alone but that’s the only thing nobody can help you with.”

“Oh, is _that_ all,” the kid said dryly, and it was so absurd on the face of it that Geralt couldn’t help laughing.

“That’s all,” Geralt said, a bit ruefully. It was absurd, it was _so_ absurd, but there was nothing else to be done, and it really didn’t bear much direct scrutiny. “Hey, let’s get these ashes shoveled before Petr comes out and scolds us for slacking, hey?”

The three of them made quick work of the rest of the ashes, managing not to get much dirtier, and they sent Lambert back inside to clean up, hopefully in time to get in on whatever snacks Petr was collectively awarding the whole group.

Ksenya and Geralt went to wash up, themselves, and after a few quiet minutes Ksenya said, “I think he’ll be okay.”

Geralt shrugged, and shook his head a little. “Or he’ll die on Sad Albert like most of us do,” he said, and grimaced as Ksenya smacked his arm.

“Don’t _say_ things like that,” she said.

He sighed. No, one shouldn’t say things like that. It was the way it had to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ksenya, a trans woman, has noticed that Lambert is unusually attentive about certain things, so she's figured out he's got something up with his notions of gender as well. She and Geralt have a long conversation with the kid and he reveals that he's likely nonbinary, though everyone concerned lacks the vocabulary to discuss it. Ksenya closeted herself and misgendered herself through her childhood to complete her training and urges Lambert to do the same. She involved Geralt because she has noted him as being generally supportive of this sort of thing. (His own objection to the label of "man" isn't a self-esteem thing, at this point, he just doesn't identify with humans. Later in his life after more trauma it may be, but at this point he's somewhat proud of being a Witcher.) 
> 
> Note: Geralt also mentions an adult nonbinary they/them Witcher, and it is made clear that the Wolf School is generally supportive of other-gendered Witchers in adulthood. But they only train boys.
> 
> For Lambert's actual thoughts on this, read [ Anoke's version](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25895626/chapters/64610803) of these events, as they're from his point of view!


	4. Frostproof

The weather broke, at last. As evening drew down, the wind picked up in gusts that howled through the crags and crenellations; dark came early, as heavy clouds settled in. Geralt joined a work crew hastily thrown together to close the storm shutters on the more exposed windows-- sometimes these early winter storms blew strongly enough to fill corridors with ice. 

So he was in the stairwell of the mage’s tower when Hieronymus came out of his workroom, looking grim. 

“Someone’s in the Pass,” Hieronymus said to Geralt, who was the closest person standing there.

“What,” Geralt said, not understanding; most of his attention had been on getting the shutter fastened so he could shut the window casement and stop the howling tide of freezing air that was filling the corridor. 

“There’s a Witcher in the Pass,” Hieronymus said, “someone trying to get here who left it too late. They’ll get caught in the snow.”

“Oh,” Geralt said. “Oh! Where? What can we do?”

Hieronymus looked past him at the shutter, and gestured absently; the recalcitrant catch, rusted open, suddenly freed itself and slammed shut. Well, that was one way to do it. Geralt closed the window and turned to follow the mage, who seemed to be waiting for him to do that.

Rennes regarded them wearily. “Some idiot is chancing the Pass this late,” he said. “I’ll not risk the lives of others to go save him.”

“A fresh horse could mean the difference,” Hieronymus said. “And I know precisely where he is.”

“I’ll go,” Geralt said. His ribs were nearly back to normal, and his horse, jerk that she was, was also pretty good in the snow. He’d learned the trick of greasing the frogs of her feet to prevent ice buildup, and she had good winter shoes on. 

Rennes turned his full attention onto Geralt for a moment, inhuman, inscrutable; Geralt managed not to shrink under his regard, but squared his shoulders a little. Hieronymous interrupted before Rennes could say whatever he’d clearly been formulating. 

“Ah,” the mage said, “didn’t I give you increased frostbite tolerance? I think that was one of the things in that second round of mutations.”

Geralt nodded politely. “Um,” he said, “not that I’ve-- noticed, but that’s not to say--”

Rennes caught his eye, looking faintly-- amused? Tolerant? It startled Geralt to be included in such a look, and he closed his mouth and nodded again. 

Rennes sighed. “Whether Geralt is an improved frostproof model or not, I’ll grant him permission to go provided he can convince someone more experienced to join him. Leave in a quarter hour, if you can find someone, and meanwhile Hieronymous will pinpoint our errant brother’s position and be prepared to pass it along to you.”

In five minutes Geralt presented himself hopefully with Eskel, and Rennes glared forbiddingly at him. “Your year-mate is not _more experienced_ ,” Rennes said. “I want someone at least ten years older.”

Eskel looked glum, and Geralt scuffed his feet a moment. He’d thought of asking Jorik, since Jorik had been so kind earlier, but he and most of his friends were absent, either on some work party or doing something outside the Keep. 

“What’s this now?” Varin asked. He’d been talking to Rennes before Geralt had arrived, and was eyeing both of them without favor.

Rennes gestured, making it clear he wasn’t going to explain. Geralt steeled himself, and answered, “Hieronymous says there’s a Witcher on the pass, who’ll get stranded in the snow if we don’t go help, and I volunteered to go, and Master Rennes gave permission for a rescue only if I can get someone else to go with me.”

“Someone more experienced,” Varin said. But he didn’t look as annoyed as he usually did. He glanced at Rennes, for some reason, and Rennes raised his eyebrows. “I’ll go,” he said. “I had just been saying I wanted to check the mine to make sure the mouth was covered, so that ice wouldn’t form and make it inaccessible all winter. It’s on the way.”

Geralt had never for a moment contemplated asking Varin to go with him, and had never really considered ever spending any time with the man. “Oh,” he said.

“Then leave immediately,” Rennes said. “Has Hieronymous finished scrying for the exact location?”

“Uh,” Geralt said, “I’ll find out.”

Approximately ten minutes later he was riding out, Roach’s hooves properly greased, a spare horse behind, Varin ostentatiously letting him lead the way since Hieronymous had shown _him_ the illusory scrying results. The ice was rattling down and turning to snow, and their destination was just past the mine entrance, and Hieronymous hadn’t been able to identify the Witcher save to say that the vibrations from their medallion suggested it was someone who’d been through the Trial of the Medallion sometime less than ten to fifteen years ago, based on some esoteric criteria Geralt had gracefully declined to hear enumerated because he was in a hurry. 

Geralt had a strong uncomfortable feeling that this was his responsibility now and if it went wrong, Varin was going to judge him harshly, but he almost always had that feeling about Varin so it was nothing new. The Witcher attempting the pass so late was really the one at fault here, except that they clearly had not asked for anyone to attempt to rescue them.

“If it goes very poorly,” Varin said, “we can likely hole up in the mine, but then we’d have to dig ourselves out and come back.” They’d brought a very small amount of provisions but haste was the primary concern. Geralt was guiltily aware that were he in full condition he could easily pass several days without food, but he was currently underweight and wouldn’t be unaffected; even a single missed meal would make him weaker. He really wasn’t recovered enough for this-- not if it went badly. He should not have volunteered, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that if he hadn’t, no one would have gone, and they’d have found the skeleton of whoever it was in the spring. 

He couldn’t bear that. He’d lived with death all his life and felt so strongly that anything he could do to stave off even one, even at the risk of his own, was worth it. 

He’d feel different if he wound up trapped with Varin in the iron mine in the pass, though, he secretly suspected.

They made good time, even with horses reluctant to face into the teeth of the storm. Eskel had loaned Geralt a far nicer ushanka-style hat than Geralt owned himself, and he was glad of it, especially the way the fur caught the ice before it could reach his face. 

The storm had set in, in earnest, by the time they reached the mine. Varin laughed grimly. “Good thing I checked,” he said; the heavy wooden cover they kept over the mouth of the mine was only dragged halfway into place. It took both of them to move it, in the grip of the wind and the slip of the ice, but they managed it, and as they stood catching their breath Varin said, “So, Geralt.”

Geralt managed to tilt his head in interest rather than cringing in anticipation. “Yes, Master Varin?”

“Are you an improved frostproof model or not?” Varin asked. Clearly he’d had a moment to discuss with Rennes, to have picked up that phrase. 

Geralt decided the thing to do was laugh, so he did. “I don’t know,” he said, “I’ve only been me, so I don’t know how I compare.”

Varin nodded, conceding that. “We’ll have to see afterward,” he said, and mounted his horse again. “Here, I’ll lead the spare.”

Geralt gave him the lead, gratefully; the spare horse was even less excited about this outing than Varin’s horse, who had to be more or less constantly goaded. Roach had been dealing more or less gracelessly with it, but had confined her commentary to pinned ears and some attempts to get the bit in her teeth, a bit of sideways walking-- but forward progress, largely, which was better than the balky spare horse. 

It was only a little while longer of riding before they drew near to the place Hieronymous had calculated to be the incoming Witcher’s location, provided they maintained their rate of travel. But it was clear, as they arrived, that the incomer had not maintained their rate of travel; the pass stretched out clear and unmarked and piling deeper with snow, heavy drifts across a few places.

“Ah,” Varin said, “if he’s not here, I bet he’s hung up at a drift. There’s an open spot down around that bend where it drifts wickedly.”

Geralt hadn’t considered that Varin must know this terrain well. He ventured to ask, as they came down a sheltered bit wide enough to walk abreast, “Did you used to go out on the Path, Master?”

“Yes,” Varin said, “for years.” He sounded vaguely affronted. “I wasn’t born a sword instructor, you know.”

“I know _that_ ,” Geralt said. He didn’t know how to explain that all the other instructors for whom it was relevant always told stories of their time on the Path, or a least gave first-hand examples, and Varin never did.

“I wouldn’t be so harsh if I didn’t know exactly what it’s like out there,” Varin went on in a moment. “You don’t think I’m cruel for its own sake?”

“No,” Geralt said hastily. He’d thought so, at the time. In hindsight the things Varin had subjected them to were far from the worst things they’d undergone, but he’d lived in terror of him, as a child. “You just-- you never talk about it.” Vesemir told them stories a fair amount, often while they were working on rote tasks, or maintenance; some of his stories had been scary but some had been funny.

“Mm,” Varin said, and pointed. “There. The snow’s drifted there, and it’ll be thick quite a distance.”

Geralt nodded; he could see where the path switchbacked and was exposed for some time. They’d brought shovels, but it was possible they’d be able to trample down drifts.

“The question is, do we clear this, or do we give up,” Varin said, eyeing the whited-out sky. The storm was intensifying. Beyond this sheltered area it would be exposed for quite a distance. 

Geralt blinked at him. “Give up,” he said, surprised.

Varin returned his regard, unmoved. “Why do you think Rennes made you bring someone more experienced?” He rode up to the edge of the drift and stood in his stirrups to look out into the unsheltered area. “I don’t see him.”

“We’ve hardly looked,” Geralt said. 

“And we’re almost out of time regardless,” Varin said. 

“Wait,” Geralt said, standing in the stirrups himself. He could see-- through the worsening snow, there was-- “There! Someone’s there!”

Halfway through the exposed stretch, a figure was struggling to break the trail. It was probably a hundred yards’ distance, down a steep stretch. 

Varin squinted. “I don’t see,” he said. 

“Halfway,” Geralt said. “He’s tall, and his horse is-- I can’t tell the color, covered in snow.” The person was on foot, leading a clearly exhausted horse. The person was moving quite slowly, clearly close to exhaustion as well. 

“I genuinely can’t see anything,” Varin said. 

Geralt cupped his hands to his mouth. “Hallooo,” he shouted. He was too hoarse, it wouldn’t carry; he couldn’t manage a piercing tone. He pulled off one of his mittens and stuck his fingers in his mouth, and on the fourth try managed to produce a whistle. 

The figure reacted, and made a violent flailing motion, and Geralt waved back. 

“Ah,” Varin said, “I see him,” and dismounted, retrieving the shovel from his horse. “We’re cutting it close but if he keeps coming we can get him out from this side.”

Geralt waded into cutting through the drift with great enthusiasm, having a quarry in sight. After a little while of frantic digging, he had to pause, and Varin stepped in, giving him a wry look. “Pace yourself, boy,” he said, and kept going steadily, at a slower pace. 

The other drew nearer, though his pace was faltering. Geralt rallied, and set back to work. 

“Remember,” Varin said, after a few more feet of slow progress, “we have to get back, and at least one of the sections will be drifted heavily like this again.”

“Right,” Geralt said, and slowed down a little, setting himself a more sustainable pace. It was hard to keep from racing on, but his arms were getting heavier. The important thing was not to get a cramp, and he focused carefully on his breathing to prevent it. 

“You have to go easy on yourself, recovering from an injury,” Varin said. “Didn’t I teach you that?”

“I’m fine,” Geralt said. 

“You’re favoring your left side,” Varin said, “and maybe the injury is healed but the muscles haven’t recovered. You can’t brute-force that, only time can improve it.”

“It’s good enough, though,” Geralt said.

“It’s not, really,” Varin said, sounding disgusted.

Geralt steadfastly ignored him and hopped up onto the piled snow to crane his neck to see the mystery late Witcher. The other hadn’t made much progress toward them; he was clearly trying, but he was also almost at the end of his endurance. Geralt hopped back down. “Big guy,” he said.

“Mm,” Varin said, “I still can’t see him.”

A few more feet of digging, a few more yet, and Geralt was getting shaky, but he was determined to keep up with Varin, whose pace hadn’t wavered for a moment since they’d started. At long last, Geralt could hear the other Witcher’s grunts of effort as he dug.

And recognize the voice.

“Gweld!” he shouted.

There was a pause. “Geralt?” Gweld answered.

“Yes!” Geralt said.

“What the hell is wrong with you, attempting the pass so late?” Varin demanded. 

Gweld was quiet a moment. “Is that-- who is that,” he said, badly out of breath.

“It’s Varin,” Varin said. “Now answer the question.”

Gweld grunted again, and Geralt set to digging with renewed fervor, and at long last his shovel blade broke through and Gweld stumbled and fell through the opening. Geralt caught him, hauling him back upright, but Gweld could barely stand. 

“Gweld,” Geralt said, delighted. Varin pushed through and got the reins of the spent horse, dragging it through the cleared area and onto the path. 

“No time,” Varin said, “let’s go,” and Geralt hauled Gweld, who was too badly exhausted to manage his own weight, back up the cleared pathway to where they’d left their horses. 

It took both of them to get Gweld up onto the spare horse, and Varin assigned Geralt to lead the exhausted horse and gave himself the difficult lead position to take them back. He had been correct; it was hard going, with the wind now howling at gale force with sharp ice fragments and so much flying snow they could barely see where they were going. But the prevailing wind direction was at their backs now, and they had a long sheltered stretch where they could make good time. They made it past the mine opening, and then hit their first big drift. 

“No,” Varin said when Gweld would have slid off the horse. “Stay there.”

Geralt gave Gweld the other horses’ reins, and set to with Varin. It only took a few minutes to punch through the drift, but in that time the wind picked up even worse. They could no longer really see at all, and the horses could only stumble forward, no faster pace was possible. 

They slogged through the whiteout, but there was only one way to go, which was forward, and no real way to get lost from the path at this point. Farther down the path was more perilous, with places you could lose it. Up here it was straightforward, if steep. Geralt had to dismount to get the horses through another drift, but they didn’t have to dig, he just used his body to break the trail, and then he climbed back on.

They came to another drift soon enough. Geralt had begun to suffer a little with the cold, finding his hands and feet were going numb regardless of the warm mittens and extra wool liners in the boots and the fur cuffs keeping the snow out all around. His nose was numb, too. He could only guess how Gweld was faring. But it remained to be seen, if he was more frostproof than the others; he doubted it. He was fairly miserable. 

Varin climbed down from his horse and stood regarding the drift. Geralt summoned his courage, and came to stand next to him. “This is a bad one,” Varin said. “This is the time to consider turning back for the mine.”

“It won’t be warmer,” Geralt said, “and there’s not much fuel to make a fire in there.”

“No,” Varin said. “And we didn’t bring much by way of provisions, and it’s not likely Gweld’s well-supplied.” He gave Geralt a sharper look, at that. “Did you know it was him?”

Geralt shook his head. “I knew he was still out,” he said, “but we’d had a message saying he wouldn’t attempt it if it was too late, so I didn’t think he’d come.”

Varin still squinted suspiciously at him for a moment. “Don’t think I don’t know how cozy you lot are.”

Geralt retrieved the shovel from where it was strapped to Roach’s saddle, shaking his head and refusing to engage. He and Eskel and Gweld were close, sure, but not unusually so; many other of the Witchers had special groups of friends they favored, some in sexual ways and some just in closeness. Many rooms had several beds pushed together in which a pile of adult Witchers would sleep, the way they had as children, and some decidedly _not_ the way they’d slept as children. To his knowledge Varin always slept alone but that wasn’t unusual either. It was generally neutral; some of them preferred to always sleep alone, and some preferred to spend as much time in company as possible. Some of the older Witchers occasionally went on about the evils of relying on anyone or anything, but nobody genuinely thought sleeping alone all winter in a Keep full of friends was actually a superior choice on any kind of theoretical or moral level, and _certainly_ not on a practical one.

“I take it you don’t want to chance the mine,” Varin said.

“No,” Geralt said grimly, “I don’t, I don’t think the storm will end soon and I know Rennes won’t send anyone out after _us_.”

“That he won’t,” Varin said. “And Gweld’s condition’s not likely to improve, nor is yours.”

“I’m fine,” Geralt said, and Varin caught him by the shoulder as he would have thrown himself into digging.

“Hold back,” Varin said. “This is a long stretch. If you start out too fast you’ll hurt yourself and I’ll have to finish alone, which I’m not looking forward to.”

Geralt had to admit he was correct. Gweld was… perhaps not entirely conscious, huddled on the spare horse. And he himself was close to exhaustion. He had a Tawny Owl potion with him, which he’d probably have to resort to. 

He set to, as steadily as he could manage; frustration made him want to go faster, to get it over with, but he kept his control, and watched Varin, who worked mechanically, like a geared wheel in his regularity. 

Varin stopped and went back to his horse to get a drink of water, and came over with the waterskin to offer it to Geralt. Geralt accepted, and stood a moment, huddled in the lee of an outcrop, breathing hard. “Halfway,” Varin said grimly. “Gods willing it doesn’t trigger an avalanche.”

Geralt swung around to look at the uphill side of the path in some alarm. “There’s not enough snow for that yet, is there?”

Varin shrugged. “Could be,” he said. “Could be there is.” 

Gweld slid down off the horse and came over to them, staggering a little. “Give me a shovel,” he said. 

Geralt shook his head slightly, looking him over. Not much of him was visible around the fur of his hood, but he could make out enough of his face to see the ashen pallor to his dark skin that showed he’d taken potions already, and was unlikely to be able to tolerate any more anytime soon. 

Varin had clearly reached the same conclusion already. “It’s all right,” he said. “Manage the horses, that’s enough. We’ll get through, there’s not room for another digger anyway.” And he went back to work, and Geralt followed.

They progressed steadily, and Gweld followed with the horses, managing to keep his feet but only barely. He was badly exhausted and trembling, and would not have made it even as far as the mine entrance. 

At last they broke through the edge of the drift and could mount their horses again. Geralt waited and boosted Gweld up, knowing the man wouldn’t manage on his own. He was enormous, and heavy, but Geralt managed it, and they set off again, struggling through intense howling wind now. 

They had to dismount and shovel again, and Geralt got out the Tawny Owl when they stopped to drink water again. He showed it to Varin, who nodded grimly, and they split it, and fell to digging again. It helped. Geralt kept eyeing the uphill side of the pass, terrified of avalanches.

“We should have turned back earlier,” Varin said quietly, as they stumbled out the other side of the drift. “And yet, we would have failed, if we had.”

Geralt just nodded, and got back on his own horse.

Time had ceased to have any meaning; the sky was dark with the storm, the wind was blinding and bitter. Roach was tired, fighting through the snow, and Gweld’s horse was almost dead and might not make it, having to nearly be dragged even though the others had broken the trail for it. But they were on the final approach now, and the way was blocked by one last massive drift right at the very gates of the outer curtain wall of the keep.

Varin dismounted and cast an enormous _Igni_ , melting a sizable chunk of the drift. But Geralt knew you couldn’t clear enough snow with _Igni_ to really melt a path, not without exhausting yourself.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Someone will see that,” Varin said. “Rennes won’t send anyone out, but they’ll help us once we’re to the gate.”

The older Witcher’s face had gone ashen with potion toxicity and exhaustion; casting the Sign had taxed him severely. It was time now for a last-ditch effort, and Geralt set to with the shovel, holding back only enough so that he could keep it up a little longer. After a moment, Varin joined him, and Geralt slowed a little to match his measured pace. 

A vicious gust of wind rattled them, blowing hard enough that Varin staggered off-balance into a snowdrift and Geralt had to pause to help pull him out. There was a low groaning sound, and at first Geralt thought Gweld’s horse was making the sound, but Varin grabbed his arm and he looked back down the path in time to see a wall of snow, farther down the mountain, suddenly give way and rush in a violent quake down the mountainside. 

The horses panicked, and all three of them had to work to calm them as the shaking went on and on and on, and after it had settled, Gweld staggered into Geralt and said, “That would have killed me.”

It had, Geralt estimated from his position, entirely buried the section of the path past the mine. “Fuck,” he said, slightly awed. 

“Well,” Varin said, as the wind picked up again, “good thing we’re this far.” And he set to digging again.

It was another brief eternity before Geralt heard voices over the howling of the wind, and after that there were scraping noises, and then the gate opened from the inside. “Geralt!” Eskel bellowed, and Geralt jumped up to see over the drift.

“Here!” Geralt shouted. “We’re here! We’re here!”

Sounds of furious digging started up, and Varin calmly went and put his shovel back on his horse and climbed up. Geralt kept digging, rather desultorily, and in a moment shovels broke through from the other side. 

Eskel was the first through the gap. “Was that an avalanche?” he shouted into the gale.

“Sure fucking was,” Geralt said, pounding him on the shoulder. “Look who it is.”

Eskel looked at Gweld, who was standing next to the fresh horse they’d brought him, wavering on his feet. “Holy shit,” Eskel said. “You fucking idiot!”

“Yeah,” Gweld said, and Eskel greeted him with much back-slapping. 

“Let’s get a move on,” said one of the others who’d been digging from the other side, and Geralt went over to help Eskel haul Gweld onto the horse. 

* * *

They rode to the stables on the cleared path, and Varin went in first. A couple of the post-Trials trainees took the horses to groom and cool them, and the stablemaster herself took Gweld’s exhausted mount. Eskel took Gweld’s arm over his shoulder and clearly expected Geralt to take the other side, but Geralt shook his head-- he wanted to catch Varin. 

Holda took Gweld’s other arm instead, and Geralt slipped out of the general hubbub.

He caught up to Varin in a back passage. The old swordmaster was clearly headed for the baths. “Well,” Varin said, hearing his footfalls and turning to see him. “What, no joyous reunion with your friend?”

“I’ll talk to him later,” Geralt said.

“Show me your hands,” Varin said. “I want to see if you’re frostproof.”

Somewhat bemused, Geralt held out his hands, and Varin inspected them. As he did so, Geralt realized the swordmaster’s left hand was frostbitten, the fingers swollen taut. Geralt’s hands weren’t exactly comfortable, but no, he didn’t have frostbite. Varin looked up into his face, and he was startled to note that the older Witcher had patches of frostbite on his cheeks and nose as well. 

“Perhaps you are frostproof,” Varin said, quirking an eyebrow. 

“Or I had good mittens,” Geralt said. 

“That’s true, it’s hardly a conclusive test,” Varin said. He kept his eyes on Geralt’s face, searching as if he’d find some other evidence there. “You could’ve taken a couple more potions too, doubtless.”

“I mean,” Geralt said, “so could you.” He shrugged. “Is that what this was about? You want to know if I was worth it? The answer’s no, Varin, I’m not that much better. Not three boys’ worth better.”

Varin glanced down at Geralt’s hands, then released them and looked back up into his face, clasping his own hands behind himself. “That wasn’t why I came with you,” he said.

“Then why?” Geralt asked. 

Varin shrugged. “Why not?” he asked. “We saved a life. It’s a nice feeling, and it’s easy to say now it was worth the risk.” He patted Geralt on the arm, and turned to keep walking. “See to your friend, while you still have any.”

* * *

Gweld spent three days in the infirmary, but he was young and strong and bounced back with great cheerfulness on the evening of the third day when he finally emerged. He explained sheepishly that he’d only chanced the Path so late because he hadn’t quite marked the passage of time correctly, and had lost track. He’d realized his mistake too late to turn back. 

“I hadn’t really expected a rescue party at all,” he said, “let alone one with those two people in it.”

“Ah,” Geralt said, grinning shyly as Gweld knocked his shoulder with his own; they were sitting together on a bench at one of the tables in the dining hall, well-supplied with drink. “Hieronymous sensed you were there, with some magic he was doing-- I think he was watching the storm’s approach-- and I happened to be there when he said someone was there.”

“He knew it was me?” Gweld asked.

Geralt shook his head. “Not at all,” he said. “I volunteered to go look, and Master Rennes said I could but only if I could find someone more experienced to accompany me.”

“That’s silly,” Eskel said. “You’ve been on the Path three years and there’s no one more experienced to follow you there.”

Geralt shrugged. “Master Varin was talking to Master Rennes about something else, and when I admitted I couldn’t find anyone to go with me he said he’d go. I don’t know why, really-- he said something about wanting to check on the mine one last time but I can’t really see as it was that important. It felt like an excuse, to me, but I can’t think why he’d want to go.”

“Common decency?” Eskel put in.

The other two clamped their teeth shut against laughter. “Now,” Geralt said, recovering himself, “the fact of the matter is, he did come out and save you, and he got nothing but frost-nipped fingers for his trouble, Gweld.”

Gweld’s fingers had been far worse, and his toes and nose besides, but the healers had mostly sorted him out. He couldn’t wear his regular boots yet, though, and was in big padded slippers. “It’s true,” Gweld said, “it’s true, he did save me. I’ll be sure to thank him.”

After that their talk turned to other matters, and it was soon enough they retired to bed. Gweld’s room had a spare mattress in it already, so they congregated there, and turned his bed into a cozy little fortress where the three of them could pile in. 

No one was quite in the mood for sex, they all just seemed to be on the same page, and all wanted to pile in and just be close for a while, and breathe together and listen to one another’s heartbeats and smell one another’s familiar scents. 

They dozed for a while, and then Geralt woke to Eskel quietly berating Gweld. He was running his fingers through Gweld’s dark frizz of close-cropped hair, and murmuring to him about how he was going to get himself killed being so careless all the time. 

“I know, I know,” Gweld said, “believe me, I know.”

Geralt made a sleepy noise of protest, not just objecting to being awakened, but to Eskel’s fretting. Gweld pulled him closer and kissed him, and abruptly Geralt was in the mood for sex after all. He was the neediest of the three of them in bed, always the first whose mood changed, but this time Gweld was clearly instigating. 

“Don’t think I don’t know you’re changing the subject,” Eskel grumbled, but he joined in directly enough. 

This was the only place, between his two oldest friends, that Geralt always felt like himself. His body had changed, his whole self had changed, but in this context, things still made sense. He was big now, but so were the other two, and he was still the smallest of them. Here, he didn’t have to explain, didn’t have to hold back, didn’t have to pretend not to be anything he wasn’t. They knew him better than he knew himself, knew what he needed and knew what he was feeling before he even figured it out. 

This was home, this was what made all the rest of it worthwhile. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen Varin needed a redemption arc, and I don't have time to do much with Gweld but I wanted to at least sketch him in. We'll get back to Baby Lambert... orrr, maybe not so baby, next chapter.


	5. Rescue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An epilogue, of sorts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: trauma, mild gore, character death, grief, alcohol use (mild), near-death, and a kind of bittersweet ending.

_About ten years later_

Geralt didn’t sleep for about a week after he found-- well, what he found. He couldn’t think about it directly. He spent three or four days just traveling, stopping only long enough to let his horse rest enough that she didn’t die of exhaustion or founder, and then he holed up in a shepherd’s or hunter’s cabin that was unused at the time and spent two or three days obsessively brewing potions. 

It was probable that an insufficiency of prepared potions had been the fatal-- the problem-- he couldn’t think directly about it without skating off into nonfunctionality. He had to keep focus on a task, and so he let his horse rest in the meadow and focused on the brewing, focused on his meditation to infuse the potions, focused incessantly, until finally there was a blank space and he must have slept, he didn’t know how many days later.

He woke and ate mechanically before letting himself remember what he was so upset about, and then he did cry for a while, let himself just cry about it. Not the violent mourning he really wanted to do; he was on the Path, he didn’t have time to let himself go, and there was nothing he could really smash except himself, and it wouldn’t help. It wouldn’t help. But grief was like a vicious animal he couldn’t get out of himself, and he wrestled with it alone for a while.

Finally he had to go out and get provisions, so he rounded up his well-rested horse and got her to grudgingly take the bit again, and set off traveling again.

He was on the Path, he had to work, so he checked the message-boards, feeling as if everything was far away and gray. He didn’t have time to mourn, not yet. He had to keep on. So he kept on. Drowners, barely worth the coin but it was coin so he did it, and he felt nothing, took no potions, just applied all that focus that kept him from really thinking about his grief and used it to kill drowners by the score, and in the end it was several days of work all along the riverbank in four or five different little townships but he collected the trophies and collected the rewards and spoke almost no words and nobody haggled with him about coin, for once, they just paid, and he took it and left and bought provisions and moved on. 

There were no more taxing hunts to be found, and he dimly began to realize he must be following along after another Witcher, someone who had disdained the boring low-level grinding contracts not worth the coin. Not that he could blame them. The contracts weren’t worth it and he was only doing them for something to do rather than not thinking about his hollowed-out center.

He didn’t know whether he wanted to see another Witcher. He didn’t trust Witchers of other schools, and if it was another Wolf he’d have to-- well, they’d ask, he’d have to talk. He’d have to say aloud what had happened. He wasn’t ready for that.

But after a couple more days of grinding through low-level bullshit and being paid in small change and baked goods and once, horribly, an elderly woman actually drew close enough to put her hand on his face and ask him what was wrong-- he didn’t remember what he said to her, just that he left quickly-- he came to a town with a message board with several Witcher-appropriate jobs on it, and realized he must have either veered off the path the other Witcher was taking at the last crossroads, or leapfrogged them somehow.

He had to ask the village alderman about the details of the biggest contract, and the man shook his head about it. “Another Witcher took this contract about a week ago,” he said, “and I thought he’d have come back by now. Maybe he decided he didn’t want to do it, but we’re that desperate. Maybe you can find out what made him change his mind.”

Geralt considered that. It was a fairly standard job, if a tricky one-- a griffin had been attacking people, a clear sign of some kind of disturbance. Griffins took some killing, and it was better to have a second person to assist, but provided there wasn’t some sort of complicating factor, like perhaps a second griffin or somesuch, it shouldn’t be too much to handle. 

“When was the last attack?” Geralt asked. His voice was exceptionally rusty and he wasn’t sure he’d spoken in several days. 

“Er,” the alderman said, and consulted his wife or daughter or cousin or something, a woman who was standing at his elbow.

“Six days ago,” she said, “it took Baldo’s big ewe. No, five days, it was.”

“I haven’t heard the latest from Munwyck, over the hill,” the alderman said. “It’s been raiding them too, killed a lot of their livestock. None of their folk, yet, so they hadn’t put out a contract, that’s on us, but if there’s some complication maybe we can get them to chip in if it needs more money.”

Geralt gave that another moment’s consideration. “He took the contract a week ago,” he said, to confirm. 

The alderman spread his hands in a shrug. “Never came back,” he said. 

“Hm,” Geralt said. He sighed. “I’ll go and see about it, directly.” Maybe he was just oversensitive about this sort of thing, but he had a bad feeling about what might have befallen.

It would be just his luck to stumble across two of these situations in a row.

* * *

He spent a long time on the tracking and general reconnaissance, going as far as Munwyck “over the hill” to find out the extent of the griffin’s hunting grounds. It had attacked four people in Herrick, the first village, all of them shepherds or unlucky bystanders. Munwyck’s terrain in general was much steeper, and Geralt thought the reason the shepherds had been spared was simply that the griffin had more easily been able to find isolated targets for its hunting of livestock.

It was hardly a representative sampling, but a griffin should only be hunting isolated targets and shouldn’t be going after anything with a human standing right there. It should be taking deer, and wild animals, and only opportunistically taking livestock. So something had to be wrong with this griffin.

However. There were no traces more recent than the five or six days the alderman’s relative had recounted. 

Geralt’s bad feeling intensified.

Now, he knew never to fight a griffin in its lair, but rather to set bait and lure it out. And he’d wager most other Witchers knew the same. But in a place like this, where the land was steep enough to use on both sides (as old Tulek would have put it), there was a shortage of good terrain to fight the beast on. So the question was whether the previous Witcher had lured the griffin out or not, and if so, where he’d done the deed. If he’d done it anywhere anyone could see, surely there’d have been a report to the alderman, and that conversation would have been very different. 

Geralt made his way up into the craggy mountainous area separating Herrick and Munwyck, noting from a distance that there was a collection of vultures kettling in the air currents on one side of the peak. Now, vultures did just collect sometimes, but it was likely that there was something dead attracting them. So he aimed for the set of valleys near the largest concentration of vultures, and as he drew nearer, sure enough he caught a whiff of the scent of death on the air currents.

He set to tracking and found, sure enough, hoofprints leading up one of the paths, to a particular valley near where the vultures were collecting. And then Roach whinnied and another horse answered, and Geralt followed her pricked ears into a valley.

There was a horse there, a reasonable-quality gelding, secured on a long picket line, and he’d eaten the grass to the ground as far as he could reach. From the quantity of manure, he’d been tied there two or three days at least. 

And Roach seemed to know him; their whickering noises were those of horses who were familiar to one another. She trotted over and greeted him as if they were friends.

There was a stash of luggage piled near the picket under a tarp, the horse’s tack and a set of saddlebags and a bedroll and assorted other things, and it took Geralt less than a breath to ascertain that it was absolutely Witcher gear.

Fuck.

Geralt had to gather himself a moment before he could continue. He unfastened the picket line and moved the horse to fresh pasture, making sure he could still reach the creek to drink, and then left Roach there too, and collected himself. Likely the griffin would not be by; it was either dead or fled, surely, and would not come back to this place. But he prepared as if for a fight anyway, bringing a little satchel of potions, his crossbow, some bombs, his swords. 

He didn’t dose himself with any potions to start off with, though, because he wasn’t likely to encounter anything but-- he had to let himself think it: a dead Witcher.

A dead Wolf School witcher, to go by Roach’s reaction to the horse. Again.

It was hard to make himself go on. He steeled himself and set off up the path to the next little fold of valley, where the vultures had been collecting. He wasn’t far along when he caught the scents-- griffin, and death. 

A little surprised, he kept going and in a moment was able to be certain: the smell of death was the griffin, not a dead Witcher. His predecessor had killed the griffin? But then why had he not returned to his horse?

He scaled the last crest, and the valley was below him, a glade with no trees, only grass and a little bit of scrub. And the carcass of a griffin, two or three days dead, lying where it had fallen-- it looked as though it had tried one last time to fly, and had fallen from midair to the ground, and expired after some thrashing. 

The vultures had been picking at it, but hadn’t done a great deal of damage yet. The valley seemed hard-to-access enough that no other larger scavengers had made it up here so far. It had been cold enough that probably the scent wasn’t strong enough to really pull in the heavy hitters of the scavenging world, like bears-- there were surely bears in this mountain range, and bears would eat dead things. Wolves. None of them seemed to have put in their appearance yet, nor necrophages, but it was only a matter of time.

But where was its opponent? Geralt stood at the entrance to the valley, looking around. He couldn’t smell any Witcher blood, over the reek of dead griffin, but as he cast about methodically, he did begin to pick up traces of it here and there. The battle had been fought here, the other Witcher had fought, been mildly to moderately injured, and killed the griffin, and then… what?

It took Geralt a solid twenty minutes of searching to see the scrapes on the rock at the edge of the valley, where some large substantial object-- or person-- had been thrown violently, scraping all the while, over the crest of a ledge of rock. He approached cautiously, and was rewarded, if such could be called a reward, with a discovery as he looked over the edge.

There was a body there, a man-sized body, caught in some of the scrub over the edge of the rock ledge, some distance down the side of the steep rock face. He’d been caught by the griffin and thrown, and from the smears of blood, had been fairly badly wounded. Possibly the impact had killed him, but if not, it had been a couple of days. 

No, he hadn’t died right away, Geralt judged; from the smears of blood and the position of the body, he’d been badly injured but had still tried to climb back up the rock face. It had taken him a long time to die; he was curled loosely on his side as if asleep, nestled into the scrub, but there was nothing peaceful about the rivulets of dried blood running down the rock face, the smears where he’d dragged himself up to no avail.

“Fuck,” Geralt said, staring down at the body; his knees gave out and he hunched there at the edge of the cliff for a little bit, shaking as he tried to stave off the weight of this with his earlier unacknowledged grief. He couldn’t collapse yet. 

He couldn’t leave him there, he thought. He had to give him a proper burial. It was the least he could do. And he had to get closer, to see who it was. He was too late, again, but at least he wasn’t too late to give him some final acknowledgement.

But… fuck. 

He gathered himself as best he could, and rigged up a rope to a sturdy attachment point around a rock, then let himself down the remaining distance to the body. A sturdy figure, dark-haired, light brown skin gone ashen in death, he wasn’t anyone Geralt recognized from a distance, but the leather gambeson was familiar-- the same workmanship as Geralt’s own, and his boots were similar too. 

At least the vultures hadn’t started in on him yet. He had probably lingered a while, and might only recently have expired.

Geralt managed to get down onto a level with him, and crouched down next to him, figuring out how to pick him up. If he was recently-dead he’d be stiff, and that would be difficult to carry out. His face was turned away, and Geralt couldn’t recognize him even up close like this. 

His blood smelled mosty dry but he didn’t smell strongly of death either, not over the reek of dead griffin. No, he’d lingered long, here, and died slow and hard, and Geralt sighed grimly and put his hand out to touch the dead Witcher’s shoulder.

Just then the dead Witcher twitched, and let his breath out in a kind of whimper, and Geralt almost startled straight off the rock face. “What the fuck,” he said. 

The dead Witcher twitched again, then subsided. Geralt crept closer, and saw the shoulders move, the fingers twitch-- 

He was alive. Incredibly enough, the other Witcher was still alive. “Fuck,” Geralt said, and crouched back down next to him. He put his hand carefully on the Witcher’s shoulder, and when that got no response, he took a firm hold and turned him over, cradling his head in one hand to keep it from banging into the rocks.

The Witcher’s face was bruised and he didn’t recognize him, but he could make out the wolf medallion on his chest. It was a new one; this was a young Wolf, not many years out on the Path. Younger than Geralt. Geralt gathered him in close, and determined that he had a broken arm and a broken leg, and a great deal of scraping and bruising. Crucially, the little satchel he’d had strapped across his chest, similar to Geralt’s own, had clearly taken a direct hit, and all the little potion vials in it were smashed. Terrible luck.

Though, as Geralt had just witnessed the previous week, terrible luck was all it really took for a Witcher to die on the Path. 

The bag was simply made, with only a little crude tooling on the leather, but the Witcher had strung a few cheerful bright baubles on it-- an amber bead, some glass ones, some cast metal beads. It was a poignant little detail of the man’s character, and something about it niggled at Geralt, like he should know this guy.

He hefted the other Witcher across his back, balancing him carefully, and then used the rope to climb back up to the top of the cliff, and back into the valley. He gently let the other Witcher down onto the ground and checked the pulse of blood at his throat. Weak and thready, but present. 

The young Witcher’s eyelids flickered, trying to rise, and he let out a harsh breath that might have been an attempt at a groan. Geralt got out his waterskin and cradled the other Witcher in his arm to get him upright enough to attempt to drink. He trickled just a little water in, and the Witcher’s mouth moved, and in a moment he swallowed, and over the next few moments Geralt managed to get him to drink a few mouthfuls of water. 

He did recognize him. He’d last seen him as a trainee-- he was the kid, the one Geralt had diagnosed with a panic attack. Jorik’s kid, and Geralt felt a bit of a pang; Jorik hadn’t come back a few years ago now. He didn’t know what had done it but something had taken him, out on the Path. A shame; he’d liked him a lot. 

But this kid-- Geralt couldn’t remember his name, and he thought about it for a few moments as he sorted through his potions. If he’d been stuck down there for days he wasn’t likely to worry about toxicity, so Geralt could give him a powerful decoction, if he had one. 

“Lambert,” Geralt said finally, remembering it. The-- right, he’d had that conversation with Ksenya. He wasn’t a boy, that was Lambert’s deal. Geralt had given him that amber bead, the one strung on his potions satchel, for his birthday-- nine, or ten, or whatever he’d been. Yeah. Eskel had spent a bunch more time with him, but Geralt hadn’t had much to do with him through most of his training, so he didn’t know how the kid felt about things now. But he remembered that conversation, so long ago now.

Lambert breathed, and made an attempt to get his eyelids up. 

“I got a real doozy of a Swallow here,” Geralt said. “Can you get it down if I put it in your mouth?” It’d be a waste if Lambert couldn’t swallow it. It wasn’t just a regular Swallow, Geralt had meditated the fuck out of it and it was at least triple-strength by now. Better than a harsh decoction, since Lambert’s overall condition was so fragile. 

“Nn,” Lambert said very faintly, and it sounded vaguely affirmative. Geralt pried the cork out of the bottle and set it against Lambert’s teeth, and Lambert opened for it. It took him four goes to get the scant couple of ounces of liquid down, but he did get it down. 

Lambert twitched, then convulsed, and Geralt had a bad moment thinking the kid had been too badly injured for a potion, somehow, but then he sucked in a huge breath and opened his eyes and blinked up at Geralt, wide-eyed and dazed. 

“Hey, kid,” Geralt said. 

Lambert stared at him, slightly unfocused and still twitching a bit, then his gaze sharpened and he frowned slightly, and finally scowled, and yeah okay Geralt remembered him. He’d been an adorable kid, all giant dark eyes and a pointy little chin. He wasn’t quite so cute now, but there was still a hint of youth in his still-rounded cheeks and unlined face-- he couldn’t be more than twenty, twenty-two, and Geralt suddenly felt old and grizzled and weatherbeaten. 

“Geralt,” Lambert said hoarsely. “What the-- what are you doing here?”

“Alderman figured you’d changed your mind on the contract,” Geralt said, “but I didn’t figure you’d’ve run away. I’ve been mopping up all the drowners you didn’t take.”

Lambert grimaced; the broken bones in his arm and leg must be knitting themselves up now. Might need another potion. Certainly, more water; Geralt handed him the waterskin and held him propped upright so he could drink on his own. 

“I had it--” Lambert said, and Geralt hushed him like a child.

“Take a moment,” he said quietly. “It’s all right. I can see what happened. Your horse is all right, I moved the picket and mine’s with him now. All your things are undisturbed down there. Just take a moment and let that potion work through you and then we’ll see.”

Lambert shivered, and let Geralt hold him for a few more minutes; he had gone from cold to warm in Geralt’s arms, from still to quickened, gloriously alive. Finally he sat up and pulled away from Geralt, and composed himself, tugging his gambeson straight with a distinct air of wounded dignity, though he was still clearly too injured to sit up properly and shudders kept wracking him as the potion kept working.

Geralt remembered being that young. Lambert couldn’t have been on the Path more than a season, maybe two, at this point, and Geralt remembered that fragile sense of adulthood. How much worse, to have nearly been killed, to have needed rescue; he’d been a prickly kid and he was sure to be a prickly young adult. 

But, fuck, he was _alive_ to be prickly, and that was a fucking _miracle_.

“Looks like you did some pretty good work on that griffin,” Geralt said, making his voice a little gruff. “It must’ve gotten in one last lucky shot on you, huh?”

“Death throes,” Lambert said, “and I gave it plenty of room, but it had one last real good lunge in it.”

“There’s just nowhere to go up here,” Geralt said. “Worst luck is that it looks to have hit your potion bag.”

“Yeah, and then I was fucked,” Lambert said, disgusted. “Halfway down the cliff face-- and don’t think I didn’t do the math on whether it was better to go down or up!”

“I bet you did,” Geralt said. 

“How’d you find me?” Lambert demanded, managing to sound suspicious.

Geralt shrugged. “Vultures,” he said. “I expected they’d be at _your_ corpse, though, so I’m delighted at this unexpected turn of events.”

Lambert considered that. “How’d you know it was me?” he asked.

“Didn’t,” Geralt said. He pushed to his feet. “Let’s get that trophy, get you paid.”

He saw Lambert visibly bristle, then think better of it and subside. “I’ll split it with you,” he said, a little stiffly.

Geralt shrugged. _Getting here in time for once was its own reward_ , he thought, but didn’t say it.

* * *

He thought about splitting off and going his own separate way after helping Lambert collect on the contract (his role was entirely to stay with the horses and stare blankly at the alderman, which seemed to unnerve him), but the kid was clearly working hard to hide how rattled he was. Well, he’d just spent a pretty terrible three days trying to crawl up a cliff face while bleeding internally with three majorly-fractured limbs. (He’d broken both legs, it turned out.) It was probably thirst that would have killed him, but Geralt hadn’t figured it needed to be discussed. 

Probably, Geralt reflected wearily, he was going to have to talk the kid through some heebie-jeebies, and probably, he was going to have to talk about the other Witcher in distress he’d just arrived too late to save, and probably he ought to-- the kid could learn some valuable lessons here-- but certainly, he didn’t want to. 

He bought a largish bottle of pure grain neutral spirits while he was in town, and then rode out with Lambert to make camp outside the town. Lambert had pulled down several contracts from the notice-board. 

“Alderman wanted this one done too,” he said a little gruffly, holding the scrap of parchment out to Geralt. Geralt took it, and looked it over. 

“Straightforward,” he said. “Better with two though, since we know these folks are good with the payment.” Pretty much any Witcher contract was easier with two, there just wasn’t usually enough money to go around. But if you met up with somebody, it wasn’t unusual to do a couple of contracts together, just for the company.

“You don’t need me for it,” Lambert said.

“You have somewhere else you need to be?” Geralt asked mildly. 

The young Witcher drew himself up a little in his seat. Ah, shit, he was going to be difficult. Well, from what Geralt remembered of him as a kid, that was about right. “You think I need a babysitter?” he said, spitting the words out like they were little projectiles.

“No,” Geralt said, “I genuinely don’t want to do this contract by myself.”

“Then I’ll do it myself,” Lambert said, snatching the scrap of paper back out of Geralt’s hands, and standing up.

“Surely not this very instant,” Geralt said mildly. It was drawing down into dusk, and the fire had just caught and they had a couple of rabbits on it and Geralt had put a pot on to boil some barley and carrots and herbs to round it all out a bit. He knew if someone hadn’t eaten in a few days it was good to get some substantial stuff into them, and Lambert had scarfed down some trail provisions but he was going to need real fuel to pay back all that potion-healing.

Lambert stared down at him, stamped off to his luggage, rustled around a bit. Geralt called out, “You’re not going to leave me to drink this whole thing on my own?” and fished out the big bottle of spirits from his bag.

“Fuck you,” Lambert said, but stamped back over with his tin of salt, and pulled the lid off the pot to add salt to the barley.

“Oh, good call,” Geralt said. He always forgot the salt. 

He’d been figuring they should eat a bit before they started drinking, but now he had the bottle out, so he pulled out the cork and took a swig, and then handed it over to Lambert, who took a hefty swig and handed it back. 

They sat in silence for a little while, trading swigs, and by the time the food was done, they were, Geralt judged, both pretty tipsy. He set the bottle aside while they ate. 

Finally Lambert said, “I’m not a baby,” and Geralt said, “I know,” and then Lambert said, more angrily, “It would have been _so stupid_ to die like that but I don’t know what I could’ve done differently.”

Geralt considered that for a moment. He was hungry; he hadn’t expected to be. He’d been carrying some of these provisions a long time. He hadn’t been eating much. “There isn’t much you really could’ve done,” he conceded. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“That’s so dumb,” Lambert said angrily. 

Geralt sighed, looking into the fire for a long moment. “Death _is_ so dumb,” he said. “It’s all dumb. It almost never is worth it, or makes sense, or has any real meaning behind it.”

They finished eating in silence, and Lambert held his hand out for the bottle again. “Do you need any more Swallow?” Geralt asked. “I have, uh. A lot.” More than he’d go through in a whole normal season.

“I’m fine,” Lambert said. “That wasn’t my whole stock of potions, that got smashed. Just the stuff I carry on me all the time because I need it all the time.” He took a long angry pull from the bottle and had to swallow a cough at the burn, then sat wiping his face and staring moodily into the fire. 

“I figured,” Geralt said. 

“Maybe if I make the bag stiffer,” Lambert said. He retrieved it. He’d dumped the broken glass out at some point, had rinsed it, but the leather was stained from the potions, and he hadn’t refilled it yet. 

“You don’t want to make it too bulky,” Geralt said. “Thing must’ve scored a really direct hit on it.” Everyone had bags approximately like that, a small satchel-style thing, or a strip with little pockets that you’d have threaded through your sword belt. There were only so many ways to do it, and you could only bundle the potions so securely without making them too hard to access in a hurry. 

“It did,” Lambert said. “It was kind of amazing how lucky a shot it was.” He poked at it. “Maybe a little piece of wood, though, here?”

Geralt shrugged. He pulled out his own bag, which was a kind of hybrid design; it was a small satchel with little pockets to hold each potion, and had its own strap but for fights he could prepare for he wore it on his sword strap so it wouldn’t move around too much. It held more than the ones built into the sword strap, which was why he’d bothered giving it its own carrying strap-- it was a bit cumbersome. But he figured, he could take more potions than the average Witcher, and it stood to reason to be prepared to press that advantage.

He was-- he wasn’t ready to think about what he’d found, but the crucial detail in the sad scene had been the little pockets on the sword belt, all empty. 

“I don’t know if you can protect against every mischance like that,” he said. “Main thing is not to make it so bulky it slows you down and you get killed that way.”

“Yeah,” Lambert said. He fiddled with the bag. “Maybe streamline it more, focus on just a few potions, and give it more padding and reinforcement.”

“Don’t short yourself on potions,” Geralt said, a little sharply.

Lambert drew himself up. “I’m not a fucking--”

“I _know_ ,” Geralt said. 

His tone came out a bit more intense than he’d strictly intended, and Lambert’s face went briefly blank with startlement before shading off into something harder to read. “You’re, like… all kinds of mutated, though,” Lambert said, after an awkward moment. “It’s not like I can take as many as you can.”

“You still need to not short yourself,” Geralt said. “It can be-- it can be the difference.”

“The difference,” Lambert said.

Geralt held his hand out, and Lambert gave him back the bottle. He took a long pull, took his time swallowing it and wiping his mouth. Then he got up and started cleaning up from dinner, cleaning things and putting them away. After a moment, Lambert joined him.

After he was done cleaning up, he got out his bedroll. Lambert visibly hesitated over his. “I think we can both feel pretty free to sleep tonight,” Geralt said. “Not a lot of dangers that’ll approach _two_ Witchers.”

“True,” Lambert said, and retrieved his bedding from the pile of his luggage. He still hesitated. 

It wasn’t winter, but they were still fairly high up in the mountains, so it was chilly. “No point sleeping cold,” Geralt offered.

That was what Lambert had been not-quite asking. He put his bedroll down next to Geralt’s, and stripped off his armor before exchanging it for a heavier spare shirt. Geralt generally slept in his shirtsleeves regardless of the weather, so he stripped down and rolled himself into the blanket.

Lambert settled down next to him, and after a hesitation, Geralt wriggled a little closer to him, keeping his back turned. Tentatively, Lambert pressed against his back. 

After a moment Lambert said, “Uh, so, do you wanna--” 

Sex. Of course. It would be a reasonable and normal thing to do. And under most circumstances, Geralt was a big fan. But for some reason, he could only think of-- of what he’d found, and of-- now Lambert’s nearly-dead body was all wound up in his head with the way the kid had looked as a panicking child, and--

Geralt turned over. “I,” he said, “actually I don’t.”

Lambert started to draw back, obviously stung at the rejection, and in sudden desperation Geralt threw his arm over the young man’s body. “Wait,” he said, “please, can I-- can we--”

“What,” Lambert said, annoyed and prickly.

Geralt hadn’t realized that he had a lot of emotions going on just below where he was consciously aware of them, but he was shivering now. “Don’t let go,” he said quietly, failing to keep any of his rawness out of his voice. 

There was a long tense silence, but then the tension went out of Lambert’s body. “Okay,” he said, and curled himself against Geralt’s body. Geralt stuck his face into the crook of Lambert’s neck, where the young man still smelled a little bit like a child, somehow, and slid off into the first real sleep he’d had in-- well, some time, anyway.

He woke before dawn, groggy from sleeping more heavily than he was accustomed to. The kid was deeply asleep, still; he must be exhausted, to have spent so long so near death. Geralt took advantage of the opportunity to cling to him, to listen to his heartbeat and the blood moving in his body and his breathing, slow and shallow and regular. He was alive. Geralt had come in time to save him. It was something to set against the terrible memory of the other one, mangled and cold and stiff and irretrievably too late.

When he heard the shift in Lambert’s breathing that signaled that the kid was waking up he pulled himself together and let go of him, and sat up.

Lambert yawned, rolled over, and shoved himself upright, rubbing his face sleepily like a child for the briefest moment before snapping defensively to alertness. He got up stiffly, and Geralt forced himself not to offer advice on dealing with the aftermath of broken bones-- he’d figure it out.

They ate breakfast and packed up the campsite without speaking much. Geralt wanted to ask if Lambert was really going to refuse to travel with him, but he couldn’t think of a way of asking without inevitably causing Lambert to prickle up and reject him.

As they loaded their horses, Lambert paused next to Roach, clearly noticing the spare baggage. Geralt had left a lot of things behind, had burned the body and buried what was leftover with the medallion, and left the swords to mark the grave, but he had known it would be foolish and sentimental not to take some of the fallen Witcher’s gear. 

As Geralt finished kicking over the last traces of the fire, Lambert stood by the horses watching. He turned and walked toward them, and Lambert said, “Who was it?”

Geralt knew exactly what he meant, but he said, “What do you mean?”

Lambert gestured vaguely. “Who’d you find?”

Geralt couldn’t say it. He just stared at Lambert for a moment, and Lambert made an irritated face. 

“You were too late to save somebody,” Lambert said. 

Lambert was too sharp. But, then, Geralt was probably being obvious. 

He gritted his teeth, and kept walking, coming and swinging up onto Roach. Lambert gave him an unimpressed look and mounted up beside him. “Well?”

“Gweld,” Geralt gritted out. 

If Lambert made some sort of comment, or asked a snide question-- but, for once in his life, the kid didn’t. He said nothing, and as Geralt turned Roach toward the outlying house to get information on the next contract, Lambert stayed with him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It took me a while to finish this one up but hm sometimes grief shuts you up and sometimes it motivates you. This languished almost-complete for a couple of months and I just couldn't find the ending, but. There it is.  
> (Note that this was always going to be the plot! I just didn't have the heart to see it through, before.)
> 
> Edited to add: this is kind of mean/sad, I do maybe have one more tiny afterword that's at least funny. I'll tack it on if I get a chance to write it, but at the moment I am helping my niece pretend to be a nine-banded armadillo, and she has just huffily informed me that armadillos cannot open doors. (She will be seven in three days, and misses her Grandpa bitterly.)


End file.
